Fair enough. What is it then? You don’t like the church you used to be a member of attacked? The people you love who are still Catholics? What?
People are attacking the Church here not the members(well unless the members where involved in the abuse of the cover up and in ireland at least that’s a huge number of people. Most knew something was happening but didn’t want to attack the Church as it was one of the most powerful organisations in the country. Not anymore however and they have themselves to blame for that)
My point is that it’s no less racist to rationalize why a group of people has a negative trait, when the reality is that they don’t actually have that trait at all. Rapist priests are an extreme minority, not out of line with the population at large. And yet we’ve got people insisting that they are, with varying degrees of condemnation.
WTF are you talking about, Chessic Sense? No one is condemming priests as a group for raping children. We are condemming ONE SINGLE ORGANIZATION for a long history of protecting rapists within its ranks.
I see, thank you. Your point is much clearer now. Child abuse isn’t a trait, it’s a behaviour. One that I am not inclined to justify, though I think understanding its origins helps in changing it. YMMV.
I think we all agree that Catholics (as a whole) do not have this behaviour. Obviously. Some Catholics do, just as some (any other group) do. Where we disagree is on where the institutional culture of the Roman Catholic Church stands.
My stance: The culture of the church stills sees the sexual abuse of children as a sinful behaviour, one that, like any other serious sin, must be confronted on an individual level by the sinner with help from the clergy and God.
Personally, I think that the sexual abuse of children is (also) a criminal matter, where the needs of the victim are both relevant and frankly more important than the state of the abuser’s soul. What I was trying to explain is how the church might have arrived at its position, which is reasonable by the standards of the fourteenth century but completely and totally unacceptable now.
The priests are in the minority yes. Nobody has said any different. The Church has said many times over the last few years that they are fixing their ways. What happened in the past will not happen again. Mistakes were made and now we shoudl move on. The Pope said to Ireland
And now we have a Cardinal still doing it. Can you not see why some people would fail to understand continued support for this organisation? They talk the talk but at the highest level still haven’t seemingly learned anything.
Maybe the RCC no longer routinely covers up the crimes of the molesting priests. But it damned sure used to.
The people involved in the cover-up (rather than the actual molestation) were bishops and cardinals.
The RCC, as best as I can tell, refuses to even acknowledge that this happened - that, for decades, numerous people in its hierarchy played pass-the-pedophile from parish to parish, so that a molesting priest’s reputation never caught up with him.
It has never come clean about the involvement of its hierarchy in the cover-up, and as best as I can tell, has never cooperated with or divulged information to appropriate law enforcement organizations so that those higher-ups involved in the cover-up have to face justice.
It’s as if the Watergate investigations had ended with the trial and conviction of the seven burglars, but never got as far as the Nixon White House crew that tried to cover up any connection between the burglars and the White House.
1.5% of priests THAT WE KNOW OF rape children?! Does anyone know what the occurrence among the general population is? I admit to having no idea, but if you had asked me to guess, I would’ve said less than 1/100th of 1 percent.
Even if its just 1.5% of the Catholic priesthood abuses children, their privelged position in many societies allows them greater access to children, and 1.5% of priests are certainly capable of buggering a lot more than 1.5% of children.
And once they have done, unlike every other proffessional field, once they are exposed, their employer goes on to protect them - despite this being in direct conflict of the laws of just abour every society within which it operates.
As for complaints, well, we will never evenr truly have a real idea of the scope of these crimes, because many many people will not complain - most will have found a way to continue with their lives and will not want to bring it up again, imagine if you are 40 years old, and family man - would you want to put your family through such a dark period of your life?
The true scale of abuse is likely to be many time shigher than reported, just as rape is under reported, childhood rape is also going to be under reported.
This is beside the point however. It’s the nature of what was done by an organisation not about statistics. No organisation has been involved at such a level that we know of. No organisation has protected so many and hurt so many. And this is an organisation of god.
You keep saying that it’s the Church and not the members, but what you aren’t perhaps realizing is that you’re still lumping in too many people with these cretins. You’re tossing in Father Sean, who councelled my mother during her divorce. You’re throwing in Father Ted, who used to come to the third grade class rooms and give us candy. You’re pitting Sister Mary Catherine, who gave us bread to feed the robins outside on the playground every day at recess.
So let’s say you modify it- “OK, fine, not Fathers Sean and Ted, and not Sister Mary Catherine.” That’s still too many people. So you narrow it down more and more until you’ve just got guilty parties.
But then this thread is “I pit child molesters in the Church.” But now I’m looking at it and going “…what’s with the qualifier? Why bring the RCC into this?” It’s like posting “I pit murderers that are black.” Don’t you think if I posted that, you’d go :dubious:?
Now suppose I posted that thread, and you came in and went “What’s up with the ‘black’ part? Black people are usually pretty OK, you know.” and in respose you got:
“Oh yeah? Well what about THIS murderer that’s black?”
“So, what, you SUPPORT murder? For shame.”
“Oh come on. You remember the Black Panthers in the 70s, what with their guns and all, don’t you? And they say things have changed…”
“Oh fine. You’re right. NO black person has EVER killed anyone :rolleyes:.”
“What? I can’t pit black murderers? Aren’t they pit-worthy?”
“If you don’t realize that black people sometimes kill people, you’ve got blinders on.”
and the specific (analogous) comment that actually set me off:
“I don’t understand why black people don’t paint their faces white. They should say ‘enough is enough’ and start doing it in droves.”
Suppose further that this was on a message board that had a long history of posting “Black people at it again: Another guy murdered.” and “MLKDammit black people, you just won’t learn.”
And so now we’ve got people going “I don’t hate all black people. Just the murderers.” OK, that’s a valid stance. Nothing wrong with that - hate the criminal, not the race, right? But then WTF IS UP WITH THE QUALIFIER?
Do you see where I’m coming from?
As I said there are many beautiful people in the church. I was brought up in Ireland as a member of the RCC I know. It’s a huge pity that the organisation that these people have devoted their lives to has betrayed them so badly.
That last bit is where you went off track. It’s emphatically NOT just “the child molesters in the Church” who are being pitted here. It’s “the Church” itself, in the form of the RCC administrators who didn’t abuse children, but who had responsibility for investigating the claims of abuse and meting out justice for the accusers and guilty alike. And who, in light of what we are continuing to learn, have emphatically failed at those tasks by both covering up for the abusers and making the victims feel guilty over the abuse. It’s not “the Church” as in “everyone associated with it.” That’s as asinine as blaming Enron’s mail room guys and janitorial staff for robbing the 401(k).
The article linked in the OP presents a specific example, alleging that Cardinal Daneels knew about certain abuse for over fourteen years and did nothing about it other than to try to protect the reputation of the accused.
As an organization, the RCC has the responsibility to do everything in its power to prevent both the abuse and the cover-ups. That responsibility has been heightened in recent years, as both the abuse and the responses have been made public. The linked article suggests that the RCC, however, is still struggling to deal with the issue, despite it being on their front burner for quite some time. Hence, the pitting.
Also, the church should be held to a higher standard than random rapists (obviously cover-ups by educational institutions, who also have a duty to protect the well-being of the children in their care, should be held to a higher standard as well). When this comes from an organization that preaches God’s love, it’s easy to see why they’re castigated viciously for hypocrisy.
If my kid’s school was involved in a systematic cover up of sexual abusers then I would launch a law suit against that school, and would win. I can’t against the Catholic Church because (a) I have no standing and (b) the law works to unfairly (and IMHO unconstitutionally, but I accept I am arguing against current interpretations) protect religious organizations from liability for their actions.
But the bottom line is there isn’t a single piece of evidence that my son’s school has been involved in any kind of cover up of sexual abuse. There is significant evidence that the organization of the Roman Catholic Church, to the highest level, has been involved in such a cover up. Were such evidence to exist against other organizations I would support the full force of the law being used against them.
Ireland shows, of course, this isn’t a Roman Catholic problem exclusively. The Protestant churches (as well as the British government) were up to their eyeballs in guilt for Kincora, for example.
You control it not by moving them around in a cosmic shell game, but by charging them, convicting them and putting them in a pound them in the ass hard labor prison where they belong. If someone is caught covering it up, they get charged as an accessory and they can be roomies with Bubba the tattooed biker in the slammer. Then you get the abused person a good therapist, and as much treatment as they need - for the rest of their life, if that is what it takes.
[Puts on his parachute pants and shades] STOP! Numbers time![/MC Hammer]
Worldwide population under 14 as of 2010 estimates from the CIA world factbook. Male 944,987,919, Female 884,268,378, total 1,829,256,297, 1.5% of total = 27,438,844. Number of priests, 109,000. 1.5% of priests = 1,635. number of children under 14 each priest would have to bugger to reach >1.5% of children = >27,438,844/1,635 = >16,782 children buggered by each priest. It would be very difficult for a priest to bugger that many children. Those aren’t quite Wilt Chamberlain numbers, but they’re pretty staggering. Effectively impossible on this scale. That means each priest would need to bugger their entire parish in most cases.
Ok, could they bugger >1.5% of Roman Catholic children? Well, what’s the religion breakdown? Also from the factbook
So, we need to take 16.99% of the total number of children under 14, then find 1.5% of that number. Let’s add a fudge factor because Roman Catholics tend to have larger family sizes. Let’s take 18% of the worlds’ child population. 1,829,256,297 * .18 = 329,266,133 would be the number of Roman Catholic children under 14 worldwide. 329,266,133 * 0.015 (1.5%) = 4,938,992 children to be buggered. Our workforce of 1,635 pedophile priests would need to bugger >3,020 kids each. Still a hell of a lot of buggering going on there.
Say we go Old Testament here and decide that every single priest(except one, and his wife will end up as a pillar of salt) is a kiddie diddler. How many of the Roman Catholic population under 14 would they need to diddle to exceed the 1.5% mark. 4,938,992 is 1.5% of the Roman Catholic population under 14. 108,999 is the number of priests minus our one godly man(which isn’t enough to spare the city by the way). Each priest would have to bugger >45 children to exceed 1.5% of the number of Roman Catholic children.
Yes it’s probably under-reported, but I promise you they’re not anywhere near these kinds of numbers.
Why did I do this? Because on an absolute scale our kids are probably at more danger from other things than from a pedophile priest. It’s like driving versus flying. Flying is considered more dangerous, but it’s statistically far safer. The real issue here, that we keep getting diverted from, is the coverups and stonewalling from the RCC hierarchy. Imagine if your loved one was killed in a plane crash and you knew it was because an air traffic controller deliberately gave the pilot bad instructions. Say the FAA decided, rather than to fire the controller, to move him to another airport, where he did it again, and caused another crash. But the FAA also sent a representative to your house with a wad of cash and a waiver of liability for you to sign. They pressured you to sign and to forget about pressing civil or criminal charges. Would we say the FAA deserved the benefit of the doubt? Or would we be calling for overhaul of the entire agency? Personally I’d want to see the agency torn limb from limb until every single controller who had ever deliberately given incorrect instructions was serving time and every manager who decided to shield the controller from the natural consequences of their actions was fired.
Moreover, say the work environment at the FAA created managers who were more inclined to circle the wagons around a malicious traffic controller and preserve the public image of the agency than to see perpetrators punished and victims made whole. Then you learn that the training regimen for the controllers made them more likely than the general population to snap and start intentionally sending planes to their doom. And you believe the FAA had access to the same data you did, but they refused to change their training regimen, thereby perpetuating the increased risk of creating the conditions where a controller would deliberately crash a plane. At what point do you say the FAA is in a state of essentially collective psychosis and pull the plug on the whole thing? That’s kind of what the Roman Catholic community pretty much has to decide with regards to the Roman Catholic Church.
Unfortunately, the 2007 AP study on child abuse in the schools indicates that it is simply symptomatic of the larger problem.
Defining the problem in the US as solely a problem of the Catholic Church ignores the reality: It’s in the schools. I can point to that study to prove it.
Do not let yourself think it’s solely in one small corner of society. If you do, IMNSHO you’re enabling those predators outside of your narrow focus.
I’m not trying to claim that sexual abuse and abusers are behind every door, and you shouldn’t let your children out of your sight for fear of them. However, listen to your kids - and let them know if anyone tries ANYTHING they don’t like of a sexual nature that you will support them. If you look just here on the Dope I know there have been posters who have mentioned being abused, and who were reluctant to come forward, because they didn’t have faith that they’d be believed or that they’d be supported.
And for the love of smiling babies, don’t believe predators are just in one aspect of society.
It’s not the job of the church to catch and punish sex offenders, it’s the job of the police and the courts. It is the job of the church, for those that believe in it, to look after the eternal souls of sinners. Not that I believe in souls or sin, but there you go. The saddest thing about this thread is that I feel I have to defend the church! By all means attack it for the things it deserves, such as spreading lies throughout the world and demeaning women, but drop this straw man about abuse. As has been shown repeatedly, in this thread and others, children are safer with priests than almost anywhere else.