One thing that I think has to be taken into consideration when you wonder why people are still Catholics is the time line we are talking about, here. The Church, especially in Westernized countries, is very, very different from what it was like when most of this abuse went on. There was a lot of reform after Vatican II. The body of the Church has become much less accepting of authority and they have made the hierarchy much more accountable in many areas. In many ways, it’s not a lot different from the way everything else has evolved since the 50s. People don’t sit down and shut up anymore, thank goodness. Recently, a priest was run out of my parish on the rails because he didn’t take the concerns of the laity seriously enough for their comfort, and this was over liturgical disputes and other non-life-changing issues. People who continue to support the Church aren’t supporting the Church of the 50s, the 60s, or the 70s, they are supporting the Church of 2009, which God knows isn’t perfect, but is a darn sight better than it was, at least in this regard. There’s nothing wrong with sticking with an institution you care about and trying to reform it.
With regard to the RCC and Ireland it has to be remembered that no-where in the western world did the RCC have as much access and power in country’s affairs than it had in Ireland.
The RRC basically ran (and to some degree still does) education, children institutions etc. in the State.
I went to a Christian Brother school as did everybody else I knew. Even in my days, the 70/80’s there were a lot of vicious bastards in those schools. I was at the end of a good few beatings as a child. Nothing damaging but a good hiding all the same and most of my peers did as well. It was totally normal to see a kid been hit hard several times over in the face.
The stories from my father’s generation are a lot worse. My da had his jaw broke by a priest. Everybody knew about it and it was accepted as a whole by society.
There is a lot of hate and anger in the Irish Catholic mind IMO. It’s all about fear and punishment. They bask in the horror of the martyrdom of the saints and relish the stories that contain pain and suffering. I was not brought up in a church of love. It was about fear, pain and punishment. The level of respect given to priests and the church was truly astounding.
A lot of this has changed or is changing because of the facts that have hit us before and are currently breaking the heart of my country. We are all to blame in some degree.
Some did it, some facilitated it, some helped cover it up, some ignored it and most just allowed a system to exist where it was possible. It’s a national shame that we should not ignore. This report is just a small glimpse into the true horror of what was done.
Death, rape, torture and slave labour some in my lifetime in my country. It’s shameful and there is no excuse. We need now to listen to the victims and then make sure we can protect our children because we did a almost perfectly bad job of it in the past.
Now excuse me while I go watch another special on TV about the rape and torture of Irish children.
Even in the 1990s when I attended a Christian Brothers school corporal punishment was meted out even though it had been banned years earlier. The culture of hitting errant kids was still in evidence.
You haven’t explained anything. You said you weren’t abused, and that you were. Which is it?
Really. The church has changed so much that it would no longer protect abusers? So then, what are the names of the abusers in this latest report?
I don’t claim to understand the culture of Ireland and the hold the Catholic Church has over the educational system there…it’s strange to me. I certainly think the Church ought to be held accountable, but that is partially up to the government there, and they seem to be partially culpable in supressing it.
You are aware that there are lots of reported cases of abuse and cover up in the 80s and 90s, right? Or did they teach you it all ended in the 70s and ever since it’s been peachy-keen?
They haven’t “taught” me anything. The point is, it’s an evolution. Things didn’t change overnight, but they are very different now, and the hierarchy is continuing to be challenged. In some places, it’s still much more closed than in others. I think lay Catholics have to continue to demand accountability.
Sigh. As I said, while I was not physically abused by any people in the church, I feel that it abused me (and everyone’s) trust and faith in the institution by not only aiding and abetting pedophiles among its ranks, but actively siding with them against lay catholics and civil authorities. I place them a notch below NAMBLA because they do at least condem such behavior when they are trapped, but otherwise allow it to fester.
Now how about you answering some of the questions I asked and have been brought up in this thread.
At the risk of sounding like some sort of bargain basement Batman (alliteration for the win), somebody has to pay. Maybe Italian Catholics in New York are different? Our church never had any incidents, not even a hint of anything like this. I really believe, our priests and nuns and parents would have called the police if it had. What is it about Ireland? Doesn’t anyone in the church, law enforcement, or government give a damn? It’s pretty bad when something like that goes on for so long, is so widespread, apparently everyone knows about it, and nothing is done? For that matter why has no pope ever done anything about it?
I just don’t understand.
The term “Nanny State” is often used to describe this.
And who’s going to pay? The Irish Taxpayer, to the tune of €1.2 billion.
In 2002 the Government made a deal with the Church capping the religious orders level of liability to the Redress Board (which should have been 50-50) at €128 million.
The actual figure is (and was probably known to be then) a hell of a lot higher.
I’m so angry at this. Unbelievably angry. The Church pays lip service to remorse, yet seeks to protect the scum within their ranks even after death.
Sean O’Casey said it best. “We should have as high a regard for Religion to keep it out of as many things as possible”.
I know this makes sense to you. However, the argument that “yes, they do bad things now, but you should have seen them a few years ago when they were doing really horrible things,” does not really work for a church. It’s a church. It’s not supposed to do anything bad. Not now, not in the 50s, not in the 1450s. Scandals and rapes and cover-ups and inquisitions and wars have been going on for centuries. They are all screaming evidence that the church is not what it claims to be. Its teachings do not lead to “christian” things, not even for the clergy, hierarchy, and institution itself. I think that you are a good and decent person, one of the best and most decent on this board. I think that the fact that the church produces both good and decent people like you, along with scumbag child molesters and their enablers, is proof that the church has very little influence on peoples’ actual behavior. There are good people in the church and bad people in the church. The problem is that the church makes it easy for bad people to pretend to be good people, and to victimize others.
The church has had 2000 years to reform. Time to scrap it and start over. Or better yet, just scrap it.
It seems to me that all child-care institutions in the Good Old Days are now suspect. The Australians with their forced assimilation. The Americans and Canadians with their various Indian (or First Nations if you prefer) schools. Various Catholic, Mormon and whatnot religious orders. Remember that horror story about a school on the Isle of Wight, or for that matter a secret graveyard at a prison school in (Alabama? Someplace down there.)?
If we looked we would find systemic child abuse in each of our hometowns in the very recent past. I admit the Catholic Church was no better than anyone else and has been very slow to reform. What the heck was out parents’ (and grandparents’) generations thinking?
As for transferring abusers from place to place, I suspect it was common. If you found a teacher (priest, doctor) who was an abuser, all an administrator wanted to do was get the guy out of the area as quickly and quietly as possible. “He is your letter of recommendation, don;t let me ever see your sorry face in this county again.”
So although the Catholics deserve a shellacking, I suspect we are missing a lot of other abusers who are out there.
So the church is just as bad as everyone else? OK. Remind me again why I should be modeling my life on their teachings, giving them money, trusting them with my eternal soul, etc…?
I’d respect the Catholic Church a lot more if I got more of a feeling that they were cooperating in trying to bring the priests who did these things to justice. I wish they wouldn’t do stuff like suing to keep the names of priests who abused kids out of this report. That makes it look like they are still more concerned with protecting priests than with making things right. I wish they wouldn’t fight against laws that extend the statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse- again, that looks like they’re more interested in protecting priests than ending sexual abuse. They really do need to pay more attention to how these things look.
It looks like? How about it is? Covering up is exactly what they are doing, it is not the appearance of covering up.
I never said you should nor would I presume to do so.
It’s not so much that they used to do bad things and they don’t so much anymore…the Church is made up of human beings, and as much as we want to hold them to a higher standard, they are going to have their failings just like anyone. The best priest is no better than the best among the rest of us, and likewise for the worst. (Did that make sense? It sounded good in my head before I wrote it! :)) Maybe a church (or the people who make up the church) isn’t supposed to do anything bad, but that’s not too realistic. There are a billion Catholics in the world, and who knows how many of those are clergy. They aren’t all going to behave the way they should, unfortunately. I think the real issue is with the concept of the hierarchy…not that there are leaders in the Church, but that the power has corrupted them (or some of them, anyway). So, I’m not trying to say that the Church has reformed and they will never again find themselves with these moral problems stemming from their clergy, but rather that if the laity continues to demand accountability, that the problems won’t be swept under the rug.
It may not seem like it to you, but the wider culture has a lot of influence on the culture of the Church. It’s only (relatively) recently that people have even had control over their own governments, and in some places, they still don’t. As people become empowered, institutions become less so. You say that the Church has had 2000 years to reform…well, governments didn’t start to reform until 200-300 years ago, and many social institutions are only just starting to open up to more modern ideas over the last 20 years or so. We forgive many institutions for not holding up their own standards (look at the scandals in the UN, for instance…should we scrap the UN over them? Or should we try to reform the organization so it can continue to do the good work it’s supposed to do?) Any organization you can name that is made up of people will have its problems, no matter how noble their mission is SUPPOSED to be. It’s human nature, and the nature of groups. It’s too bad, but it’s not a reason to scrap anything, in my opinion.
I appreciate what you said about me in your post. 
I wasn’t talking about that kind of paying. I was talking about justice, payback, whatever you want to call it, when people are made to answer for crimes and are punished. Everybody likes to talk about law around here. Everyone likes to say that the law is what separates us from the animals, is what protects us.
For this church AND the Irish government, it’s time to put up or shut up. The idea that a people will just accept this generation after generation, turns my stomach.
Sarahfeena, I appreciate what you have said, but the institutionalized greed, predatory practices, criminal activity and active cover-up of those behaviors is beyond the “it’s just made up of people, good and bad.” I don’t think so. I think that a corrupt system corrupts- it’s like good cops who turn bad, after being surrounded by bad guys and bad cops.
The Catholic Church in Ireland is a corrupt, borderline evil, institution that will never be held accountable for these crimes, and I think it reflects poorly on every single Catholic institution. My Irish Catholic friends (and I have a bunch) have uniformly been heartbroken and outraged by this.
My husband is/was Catholic, and having a single mom who was raising three kids meant that he spent A LOT of unsupervised time with his parish priest (he was a talented singer and was part of a well-known group). There was never any indication of abuse of the boys when hubby was there, but some vague allegations surfaced later. Hubby was heart-broken but would have denounced Father if credible evidence had come to light.