Goddammit Catholic Church, you just won't learn

The BBQ Pit
21

It’s some sort of requirement of people looking to complain about Islam or defend the RCC, or both, that they be really awful at understanding and creating analogies.

The point being made over and over here is not that there’s anything wrong with the religion, but that there’s something wrong with the Church. Nobody here’s bitching and whining about transubstantiation or the Catholic catechism.

In fact, criticism of institutions that use Islam as a shield to cover up evils is very common on the SDMB. How many Dopers do you think are big fans of the oppressive theocratic elements of Saudi Arabia, or the nasty dictatorship in Iran, or Wahabist bullshit? I’m guessing there are precisely zero. Such things come under fire here all the fucking time.

That is the equivalent to the criticism here of the Roman Catholic Church. Nobody is saying “Gosh, how could anyone be a Christian,” (well, not within this debate) they’re saying “How can people continue to support this specific organization that’s associated with a particular branch of Christianity that is doing really, really awful things?”

If you’ll please provide me with evidence that Pizza Hut is systematically protecting child molesters from justice and even enabling child molesters to continue raping children - the way the RCC has done - I will be the first person screaming for the heads of Pizza Hut executives to be mounted on pikes. If you can show me evidence the nation’s fire departments are exchanging firefighters from station to station in an effort to protect an astounding number of child rapists from being caught, I’ll be the first person howling for the nation’s fire departments to be torn to shreds and rebuilt from the ground up.

22

And Ireland which when taken per capita has to be one of the highest instance levels in the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/europe/21ireland.html?_r=1
Bastards. All of them, Church and State bodies.

23

Please watch this.

One of the most moving and heartbreaking moments in Irish TV in recent history.

This is the legacy of these bastards.

24

I actually had Dublin on this list, and then I took it off because I doubted that Chessic Sense cares in the least about bad shit that happens outside US borders.

25

Yes, and everywhere else too. You just don’t care because they’re not priests. They’re not part of an organization you hate.

Look at the stats here. Credible allegations: 1671. Number of priests: 109,000. So roughly 1.5% of priests will be credibly skeevy. Of those, half were dead, defrocked, excommunicated, suspended, resigned, or retired when (or after) the allegations were made.

And it’s not particularly fair that “298 priests and deacons who had been completely exonerated are not included in the study.” In other words, villains were cherry-picked.

I’d also like to point out that “After peaking in the 1970s, the number of incidents decreased through the 1980s and 1990s even more sharply than the incidence rate had increased in the 1960s and 1970s.” In other words, they knocked it the hell off 20 years ago.
Now compare that to thisarticle about school abuse:

Doesn’t look good there, either, does it?

There are about half a million Catholic priests worldwide. And you expect them all to be controlled simply because they’re part of a hierarchy? How, pray tell, can you possibly control that many people?

I can’t believe some of you are actually saying that it’s different for skeevy uncles because they’re not an organization. You’re essentially saying “Yes, but they’re harder to hate since they’re not easily identifiable. I’d rather just group everyone of a religion together and hate them collectively.” and then you carry on about how progressive and liberal and unbiased you are.

The title of this thread isn’t “Goddammit, Cardinal”. It’s “Goddammit, Catholic Church.” There’s a word for that, you know:

BIGOTRY.
Hey, anyone wanna pick on the Jews next?

26

Well, how’s about this: a teacher’s union and school district that protected a teacher from a credible accusation of molesting a young boy. They worked a deal with the parent of said boy, promising that the teacher will never work with children again.

Then, when the statute of limitations had expired put said teacher back into the classroom.

When the parent found out, she raised such a shit storm, that the judge presiding over the case allowed prosecution in spite of the time passed, because the judge found that the relevant authorities had acted to prevent prosecution in a timely manner. The case, when it was put before a jury was strong enough to put the teacher in question in jail.

AFAIK, no one in the union nor the school district has been punished. Certainly the union local is still headed by the same man who was the head during this whole episode.

But, yeah, it’s just the Catholic Church that does this bullshit. No one else ever has or ever will do it. And only the Catholic Church can get away with this BS by being above the law.

27

Technically, the Catholic Church and Islam report to the same deity. I gather you’re assuming some sort of breakdown in communications between the supernatural figurehead* and the Pope?

*Not intended to disparage theists, just my understanding of the way the RCC is governed.

More seriously, the roots of this problem are hundreds of years old. Remember how homosexuality was viewed in medieval Europe: a sin, a deviant behaviour, but not an orientation. Combine this with all-male “celibate” environments like monasteries, institutions that happened to be very hierarchical and which took in novitiates as young as seven. Add to this the ascetic, anti-body notions that have been strong since the fourteenth century. You can see where they might have developed an institutional culture where they really genuinely don’t see it the way we do. That’s no excuse, of course.

Unfortunately, with such an entrenched institutional culture, it is exceptionally difficult to change. Far easier to disband, but I don’t see that happening. It’s a terribly sad situation. The best first step toward changing it, in my opinion, is to ditch the celibacy requirement for priests. Introduce the idea of priestly sex being healthy and natural for adults, and break the entrenched cultural idea that it’s a secret thing all about power.

28

You’re a fuckin’ idiot.

It’s not about whether there are more or fewer priest raping children.

It’s about their institution PROTECTING them, and hiding them from the law, and paying off some victims and intimidating others for reporting the crimes.

29

Missed the edit window: Here’s a link describing the case. (The local paper has its archives online, but only for pay.)

ETA: I’m not posting this to defend the RCC. The actions described in the OP are indefensible. I’m simply pointing out that the behavior of top-down protection for known predators is more common than anyone would like to admit. And anyone who believes differently is living in a fool’s paradise.

30

The difference of course ,is the church is a powerful force in a young boys life. Kids getting buggered are up against a huge and powerful force. They are just kids. They have to live with the fact that the so called moral force of the neighborhood will cover up abuse and has for generations. The kid is getting raped by those who are supposed to be representatives of god. The church has paid out billions to pay off the kids when they are older instead of fixing the problem.
Apparently you think a few percentage points of kid rape is OK. Does it have to get to 50 percent for you to see it as a problem? How about 20 percent? Tell that to those whose lives have been ruined .

31

My god you’re a fucking idiot. The Catholic Church as an organisation has protected child rapists and enablers. It is getting the flack is richly deserves. Nobody is saying hate all members of the Catholic church, if I was to do that I’d have to hate most of my family, workmates and most people I see on the street every day. The organisation however has failed at every level to protect children. Some countries like mine gave it a special place in the land. It educated our children. A lot of them were raped, abused and treated like slaves. If you can’t see why people have a problem with the church then you are blind to the facts.

All child abusers are scum. When we find them they should be punished and their lives should be controlled so that they can’t abuse again. The church helped protect their abusers so we wouldn’t know them.

Start a thread about general child abusers if you want. I’m sure you’ll get lots of right thinking people supporting your points. This thread however is about the raping bastards in the church and their protectors who we can see are still being protected even after all the statements and promises from Rome that things are different now

And you try to defend them. For shame. Do you call yourself a Christian?

32

Riiiight. Because when one group hates another group, it’s because of their religious practices, right?

Bigot: “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with the way gypsies worship! I just wish they didn’t steal so much, is all.”

Bigot: “Hey, no one’s saying there’s anything wrong with having a seder. It’s just that Jews are so stingy, y’know?”

Bigot: “The point being made over and over here is not that there’s anything wrong with the religion, but that there’s something wrong with the Church.”

Only if you’ll please provide me with evidence that that RCC has done those things to any appreciable degree. I’ve already posted that there aren’t “an astounding number of child rapists” in the RCC. I’ve already posted evidence that they’re no worse than, say, schools in America.

But you want some evidence of some school cover-ups? Here you go. How about this one? And who can forget Lower Merion? Do I need to post an explanation of “blame the victim” too, so you see that that also happens everywhere, all the time?

This article seems to be a favorite:

33

… and that doesn’t make you pause ? There’s not one brain cell up there that screams to the Heavens : “ONLY *HALF *GOT SACKED ?! WHAT THE EVER LIVING MOTHER OF HOLY FUCK IS THAT BULLSHIT ?!”.

Oh. Even better : it’s only half of the honest-to-God guilty ones. Great. And this is your support for the position that everything’s hunky dory ?

You’re not listening. Nobody expects the Pope to control every action of each one of his priests (although, as a Sith Master, he probably could). We are, however, slightly miffed that once the skeevy priests are identified and reported, they are being actively protected, victims asked to keep a lid on it and so forth, law enforcement agencies stonewalled etc…
.

No. It’s different because skeevy uncles go to fucking prison and the sex offender list. Whereas priests get to keep on trucking in half the cases, as per your own damn cite.
Is it really that hard a concept to understand ?

34

We had a case here in Vermont last year - a teacher was let go by his school for “inappropriate” behavior with kids. As part of the separation agreement, the school gave him a positive recommendation. He got another teaching position in the next county for the next school year.

Sounds quite a bit like “quietly move him to another parish where nobody knows about him and hope for the best”, doesn’t it?

35

Jesus. That left me teary-eyed watching in the office.

36

Thank you. I will add that school to the list of institutions I despise. If I had known of it at the time, I would have advocated firing the principal of that school and any others who knew of the abuse but decided it wasn’t the school’s business to report child abuse.

I hope this is not indicative of a much broader pattern of protecting teachers from abuse charges at schools. If it is, I’d say we have to rebuild our school systems and have a big housecleaning.

37

Sexual abuse was ‘endemic’ in institutions There’s a link to one of the mony reports that have been commisioned in Ireland.

OK so the school system in the US was fucked as well but so what? Should anyone starting a pit thread about a subject have to widen it out to all possible areas? The church has said it has changed, this recent story shows that at least in some areas big players and men who are at the level of voting for a Pope are still making these decisions.

What is wrong with pitting that?

38

Hah! Yeah, I know, right? It’s like those black people. More seriously, the roots of that problem are hundreds of years old. Remember how slavery was viewed in antebellum America: a necessity, a normal thing, but not an evil. Combine this with all-white school houses. Add this to the aesthetic, anti-intellectual notions that have been strong. You can see why black people today are so stupid.

High five!

You realize that the RCC, by and large, does NOT protect them, hide them from the law, or pay off victims, right? Oh, that’s right. You don’t care about the facts. You don’t care about all those links I posted. It gets in the way of your church-hate.

YOU, sir, are a fucking idiot.

Yes, fuckwit, a few percentage points of kid rape is OK. You know why? Because there’s nothing you can do about it. It’ll happen. Everywhere there are kids, there are kid molestors.

Your post is the equivalent of an OP going “Look! Someone was killed 20 years ago! Fuck you, Boston!” and someone going “Um…it’s not that bad out there.” and then you go “Oh, so what, you LIKE murder? Gee, I guess it’s OK if someone gets KILLED! Tell that to the FAMILY!”

It’s cool, though. We already know you’re not all that bright.

Bull-fucking-shit. This thread is NOT about the small minority of raping bastands in the church and the tiny percentage of protectors. Not a single poster has narrowed it down to that. It’s a pitting of the entire church, despite evidence that they’re no worse than your local school board. It lumps good people who do good things in with ugly, terrible monsters. It keeps trying to pretend that there’s some vast number of pedophiles in the church when there isn’t. It’s exactly the same as making some bullshit disparaging claim about any other ethnicity or religious sect.

Let me be clear, here: The RCC is no worse than your kid’s school!

So please, continue to make bigotted statements like “Hey, I don’t hate the Church! I just wish they weren’t all rapists.” It helps me know who the idiots are.

No. I don’t.

39

Your point is on target. There are few organizations on the face of the earth that would be more attractive to a gay man struggling with a sexual attraction toward boys than the entry level institutions of the Catholic Church. And I don’t mean attractive in terms of delivering sexual prey, but in terms of having an environment where he was not expected to “perform” heterosexually re marriage and family, and the promise of celibacy is there to help his deal with his urges.

I don’t know how it was 100 years ago, but in the last 50 years or so it seems the population and general social context of many seminaries in the western world have become overwhelmingly gay, and I would imagine many young men are there not because they are out and proud, but because they see it as “safe zone” to control and deal with their feelings.

If you have created a same sex institutional context that is a magnet for people with these urges and struggles at some point the predictable is going to happen and a small percentage will give in to their impulses.

40

I don’t understand the analogy you’re making here. There is a valid comparison, of a sort. Slavery was also an ancient institution, also wrong, and also difficult to change—it took a bitter, destructive war and even now the lives of black people are even now not at parity with those of whites, and the South is still despised in popular culture.

However, nobody has said that black people today (or then) are stupid. I certainly have not said that Catholics today (or in the Middle Ages) were stupid. Nor have I said that child abuse was necessary or normal. I was raised lapsed Catholic (if that makes any sense) and have a great deal of respect for the institution and its people, but that doesn’t mean being blind to the whopping great flaws that cause so much misery.