Bullshit. I’ve analyzed his statements at face value, but I see you’ve decided to lie as well about what people have been saying in this thread.
More bullshit. Where have I advocated a pure anti-Catholic view?
Again more lies. Where did I advocate dismantling the Catholic Church? Your lies are nothing more than a sinful attempt to distract from the specific issue of child molestation, you immoral douchebag.
Dude, serious question.
Do you suffer from some sort of multiple personality disorder? 'cause that’s about the only way I can understand your postings here.
If so, I wish you well. If not, I’m indifferent.
So, I’ve done a quick reread of this thread, and this is what I’ve seen:
A number of posts condemning the various statements from Church defenders/officials about the child abuse.
A number of posts condemning the Church’s policies regarding child abuse and the handling of those policies.
A few posts positing a link between the Church’s celibacy requirement and the abuse.
A few posts wondering why the Church hasn’t lost moral authority over its adherents or why they aren’t voluntarily fleeing the Church en-masse.
A few posts hoping for the dissolution or disbanding of the Church.
Now, of these posts, only the ones that fall into category #5 can reasonably said to be an attack on the Catholic Church itself, I suppose. If either Paul in Qatar or BigT were serious about dealing with child abuse, they could have called out those posts specifically and joined in condemning the child abuse itself. However, what they’ve done instead is simply lie about what other people are actually condemning, throw up straw-men, shift goal-posts and use any number of other dishonest tactics.
All the two of you have managed to do in this thread is make me wonder if the Church has some secret policy that makes it okay to lie freely, since that’s what the two of you have been doing in this thread. So, bravo for attempting to make the Church look even worse to non-Catholic eyes, I guess. Like I said earlier: it’s anti-PR for the Church.
Well. That was certainly cryptic.
How’s the oracle biz these days?
But they’re not getting rid of all the bad people. So maybe we need the threat of dismantling to get them to do so.
Perhaps this is a little off topic, but I’m puzzled:
How do the authorities in the church come to know of these abuse cases without the broader community and (you would hope, inevitably through that community) the police knowing about them? Do altar boys have some access to higher-level priesty-types?
I am, and was raised as, an atheist, and have never attended church, so perhaps I’m showing my ignorance. If so I hope you’ll seize upon it with Straight-Dope precision and the usual Pit stridency.
If you desire consistancy, get a dog. My opinions change over time as I gather more information. Do yours?
Well, it would be nice if you would clarify exactly what your opinion is, since I can’t figure it out.
They’re not getting rid of ANY of the bad people, from where I sit…
Sure they are. All the bad priests have been removed. [sup]1[/sup]
[1] This statement is not intended to imply the offending priests have been defrocked, turned over to civil authorities, or even moved out of the diocese. Just as long as they are not in the parish where the priest was tempted and lead astray by your beautiful young boys, and their sinful ways. Oh - and don’t ever tell any one about this, because you wouldn’t want people to look down on your children as the sinful priest tempters that they are.
…
It seems your old opinion was that the church needed your protection, which you tried to accomplish by continually trying to take the thread off-topic. i.e. “But what about that over there?” What is your current opinion?
Ohm I still am alarmed by the general hysteria. Hysteria is rarely good, though it is often fun. The anti-religious people are doing what we could expect them to do.
On the other hand you have to be impressed by the stone-cold stupidity of the RCC leadership both now and in the past.
Presently, I am weighing this whole idea that that Pope JP2 was the evil one (or if you prefer Evil One) and Pope Whathisname is stuck cleaning up the mess.
I am getting most of my news on this from Andrew Sullivan. He seems even-handed and even that means he is beating on the Church like a tin drum. But at least he is doing it for the right reasons.
Do you really think I posted about the rabbi accused of child molestation to bash religion in general?
That you do.
A retired Italian bishop has blamed a Jewish conspiracy for this scandal now.
If the Church told the kids who were abused to shut up, why aren’t they telling the people who are saying this is a Jewish conspiracy or Catholic-bashing to shut up now?
The Pope does seem to get it, finally, at least to some degree. We’d all like to see some more concrete action. But at least this seems to be an admission that the Church has done wrong.
That’s an empty threat, and they know it. Empty threats are not going to help.
Look, **Paul, ** in my few interactions with you on this board, you’ve seemed like a genuinely nice guy. But what I think is frustrating many of us, myself included, about many of your responses is that the vast majority of the criticism of the RCC here hasn’t been criticism of religion per se. It’s been factually based criticism of specific members of the leadership of the RCC because they have been using appeals to spiritual authority (i.e. guilt trips, which are certainly not specific to Catholicism!), as well as just plain really poor judgment, to refrain from, and otherwise absolve themselves of responsibility for, dealing with entirely un-spiritual issues in any kind of comprehensive way. And engaging in coverups on top of it, and then crying religious persecution when the coverups are uncovered.
Sorry, that’s not criticism of religion. That’s criticism of specific activity which IMNSHO should be criminally prosecuted, regardless of the religious affiliation (or lack thereof) of the person engaging in it. The malfeasance just happened to take place in a religiously affiliated setting, and the actors (and the people they acted upon) were fulfilling religious roles at the time.
Why are so many people picking on the RCC? Well, they have made themselves into the largest and lowest-hanging fruit. What else did you expect? They have really brought it on themselves, and though I have nothing against Catholicism (well, OK, that’s not entirely true, though most of my issues with Cathlocism, and with hardcore religion of most types, have to do with the treatment of women and gender issues), I’m not going to give a Catholic a free pass just because he’s a Catholic. The same goes for a Boy Scout troop leader, a swim coach, or anyone else.
The Catholic Church is a hierarchy. Everyone has a boss, right up to the Pope. Now most kids who were abused and had the courage to tell anyone would probably tell their parents first. Unfortunately, it seems that most parents then complained within the hierarchy, instead of taking it directly to the police. So they went to the priest’s boss (most likely the pastor of the parish), who passed it up to his bishop, etc. The church decided to keep everything in house, up to and including such measures as swearing the victim and his/her family to secrecy.
You’ve got to remember too, that to many Catholics, the condition of their soul is very, very important stuff. The church isn’t like a social club that you quit when it stops being fun - if you’re not good in the eyes of the church, you are going to hell. So when they were instructed by a bishop “This will all be taken care of, but you must keep it all secret, upon peril to your immortal soul,” most of them obeyed.
I’m thinking it should be a mitzvah to expose child molesters.
I wish I could say I’m surprised by how stuff like this and the Holocaust comparisons keep cropping up in the RCC.
I guess I shouldn’t have been puzzled. A moral governing body is completely foreign to my worldview, but I suppose for these people it must have been like finding out that trusted local cops were corrupt: the first thing you do is go to higher-level cops. How terrifying and alienating it must have been to find that the corruption goes all the way to the top.
“It’s altar boys all the way down.”
Or as they say in the military, “Shit rolls downhill.”