No, of course not. I mean, I wouldn’t know, would I?
You seem to be trying to build a case that the Church does not think child rape is a mortal sin. You can’t do that.
You can build a case that the Church has covered up child rape and sometimes enabled child rapists. This is undeniable. I’m not aware of anyone, or at least anyone sane, who says otherwise (although don’t bother trying to dig up a cite - I’m sure you can find some denialist somewhere who said something truly unbelievable).
I have nothing to say in defense of the Church here, and I haven’t said anything in its defense in this thread.
I did try to correct some factual misstatements. This whole thing is bad enough that there’s no need to make up more stuff (like “the Church doesn’t believe child rape is a mortal sin”).
Look. I take the Sacrament of Reconciliation seriously. You don’t, which is fine. I mean, why would you? I’m just trying to show that it’s not the free pass you think it is. But I don’t think there’s any point in us discussing it any more.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation isn’t about escaping consequences from the Church. It’s about escaping consequences from God. And God, presumably, knows if repentance is sincere or not, even if we mere mortals don’t.
Even if a molesting priest does take the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Church still can and should impose Earthly consequences for what he did. Historically, too often, they haven’t, and that’s a problem. But you can’t attribute that problem to the Sacraments.
The point of the thread is that these miscreants are saying, out loud and with no shame, that raping children, and protecting those that do, is not nearly as horrible as saying that government has no place in the abortion decision. I have built that case and it is unassailable.
I don’t think so. You haven’t shown any evidence that any of these miscreants, who I agree are obviously promoting a lot of hypocritical and repellent positions, are saying that child sexual abuse and its cover-up are not mortal sins.
They’re not saying that, AFAICT. Nor are they saying that Catholics who are in a state of mortal sin through having committed such acts shouldn’t be denied communion.
But Catholics who did commit such mortal sins and consequently went the confession-repentance-absolution route for them are by definition no longer in a state of mortal sin, and are entitled to receive Communion. You and I as non-Catholics may think that this sounds far too lenient for the gravity of such offenses, but that’s not the point. The point is that mortal sin is not a permanent disqualification from receiving Communion, according to Catholic doctrine.
What you seem to be misunderstanding is that as far as Communion eligibility is concerned, the issue is not whether child rape or protecting child rapists should be considered a worse sin than supporting abortion rights. The issue is whether the committer of the sin has undergone the doctrinally-required process of repudiation of the sin.
Have they said publicly that priests who rape children should be denied communion? Have they publicly admonished ANY pedophile Priests? Or Cardinal Law? Have any of them said that Priests raping kids is a problem in their organization and they should be rooting these maggots out?
Because as far as I can see, they have not. But they are vocal against a political position saying it is very bad and worthy of hell fire.
But I will ask again. Can anyone cite a pedophile priest being denied communion? I mean, we have hundreds of these guys. Surely ONE has been denied, right? (but it doesn’t count if the press had already broken the story)
Yup, anybody who rapes anybody commits a mortal sin (Catechism 2356) and by definition is in a state of mortal sin until they do the contrition process.
I mean, duh? There is pretty much universal agreement, including among Catholics, that child sexual abuse is wrong. There is widespread disagreement on whether abortion is wrong.
In other words, only one of those positions is controversial, and that is naturally going to be the one that provokes the vocal arguments.
Don’t get me wrong, I disagree with very many positions of Catholic doctrine on sex and sexuality, and I think the Church has acted hypocritically in many respects in response to the clergy sexual abuse scandal. I just don’t think you’ve got a leg to stand on when you try to assert that the Church doesn’t classify child sexual abuse, or complicity in same, as a mortal sin. Obviously they do, and official doctrine makes that very clear.
Even though it’s the PIT, I think these two responses sum up my feels, and while I disagree with most Catholics, I feel that @Saintly_Loser has tried to be fair minded while respectful of his faith here. I still strongly suspect that, as others have said, there are those within his circle of associates that may have direct knowledge of these issues, but if they aren’t sharing with him, it does not make him a liar.
However, I would have a hundred-fold respect for various Catholic authorities (note, I’m talking about the people who knew, and transferred priests guilty of this sin, and made every effort to cover up these actions) if they had determined an appropriate penance, granted absolution of their sins by virtue of their religion, and then made sure that the priest turned themselves in to the authorities. Regardless of the seal of the confessional, they should have used their considerable moral authority to make sure the priests took responsibility for their actions, which S_L indicates would be a key part of true repentance. And they should have made the absolution conditional upon these actions.
While no, they are not technically as guilty as the priests committing the initial crimes, they are very much guilty of any subsequent crimes committed after they enabled the criminal priests by covering up and transferring them. And I hope their G-d judges them as harshly as I do, even if I do not follow or agree with their faith.
Certainly not wrong enough for the Church to do anything about it. The Church policy was to keep it hush hush, threaten any Priest who may complain, pressure Catholic cops and DAs into doing nothing, move the pedophiles from place to place where they can have fresh victim pools, deny, deny, deny. This is fact. Who cares what their official doctrine was. Their PRACTICE was quite different. Pedophiles priests were still priests. They didn’t even get fired.
The Church protected and assisted pedophiles, and would be doing it to this day were it not for reporters getting on the story. They only made changes because of bad press, not due to right or wrong.
And I am still waiting for one, just one, cite that says a Priest was denied communion because he was raping children.
If a priest was denied communion, or is being denied communion at this very moment, it would not be a matter of public record.
And I’m pretty sure you know that.
So nobody is going to be able to provide a cite to you.
But that isn’t the telling point you seem to think it is. Every day, Catholics are instructed by their confessors not to present themselves for communion until they’ve been absolved of their sin, and absolution, for serious sins, is often withheld until certain conditions are met.
None of this is in any record anywhere that anyone in this thread could cite.
But if you think the lack of a cite means you’ve scored all the points and can now declare victory, hey, enjoy it.
Nobody at all AFAICT has been disagreeing with you that the Catholic Church acted wrongly and hypocritically in dealing with clergy sexual abuse and was far too lenient with pedophile priests.
But that’s not the claim you were originally making. You contradicted Saintly_Loser when he stated, quite rightly, that child rape counts as a mortal sin in Catholic doctrine, and you were wrong.
Moving the rhetorical goalposts so that you’re now complaining instead about Church hypocrisy in practice, an issue on which nobody is disagreeing with you, doesn’t make your original assertion correct.
Saintly_Loser has patiently explained to you, more than once, why that would not be a matter of public record and therefore would not be attested by cites. Namely:
If a child-raping priest was concealing his crimes from his fellow priests, nobody would be denying him communion because nobody else would be aware that he was in a state of mortal sin.
If a child-raping priest were found out and did not repudiate his crimes, it would be totally fucking obvious to everybody with that knowledge that he was in a state of mortal sin and thus was not entitled to receive communion, and there would be no announcements about it.
If a child-raping priest repudiated his crimes and went through the process of confession-repentance-absolution, he would no longer be in a state of mortal sin and thus would be eligible to receive communion; and again, it would not be a matter of public record.
As I pointed out before, less patiently than Saintly_Loser, the reason that some Catholic priests are making a big public fuss over the issue of denying communion to abortion-rights supporters is precisely because it is not universally recognized (as it incontrovertibly is in the case of child rape) that that position does or should count as a mortal sin.
Yes, as already acknowledged many times, from a PR standpoint there is indeed clear hypocrisy in the Church’s making a big public fuss over denying communion to supporters of abortion rights while not making a big public fuss over denying communion to child-raping priests. Again, nobody is denying that.
But when you try to claim that that behavior implies that the Church does not actually deny communion to (unrepentant) child-raping priests, or that the Church doesn’t actually classify child rape as a mortal sin, or that the Church can plausibly be assumed to be allowing (unrepentant) child-raping priests to take communion unless it provides some documented concrete evidence to the contrary, you’re talking out your ill-informed ass.
Sorry, it was unnecessary to use that kind of language, Pit or no Pit. But my point stands that you were just way off base in the substance of your debate with Saintly_Loser.
Well duh, because they’re trying to get the politicians to change their position, i.e., to be persuaded that supporting abortion rights is wrong and unacceptable.
Despite all the Church’s hypocrisy and outright crimes on the issue of clergy sexual abuse, there has never been any disagreement, either in Church doctrine or in public opinion, that raping children is wrong and unacceptable.
Church doctrine, for sure, public opinion, for sure (how could they even survive as a church without condemning the crimes publicly?), but internally and procedurally they treated child abuse as some petty and negligible crime times and times again, to this day, and this is what counts and hurts.