Wasn’t that just Father Ted speaking to Sinead O’Connor?
I don’t believe I said it did. I was just trying to say what I’d expect of the relationship between governmental behavior and moral behavior, compared to what I’d expect of the relationship between the behavior of a specifically Christian organization and moral behavior.
I hate it when people seriously bring up this red herring. Even if Catholic priests committed child abuse at 1/2 the rate of the general population there would still be a problem because the organization covered it up and let it continue.
The Church is not necessarily responsible for the first kid each priest abused. It is definitely responsible for each kid that was abused after they found out and chose to protect and keep that priest in a position with access to children instead of turning them over to the police.
Damned straight.
And to this day, they are responsible for continuing to protect the bishops and cardinals who protected those priests and moved them around to cover their tracks. They’ve been willing to turn a certain number of molesting priests over to the wolves, but they’ve been considerably less forthcoming about the higher-ups. Cardinal Law, one of those higher-ups in question, was even given a sweet sinecure in the Vatican, safe from U.S. prosecutors.
Seriously? I think WW2 taught people everywhere organizational discipline to a degree never seen before. More people than ever learned how to function first and foremost as parts of an organization, and to put their own morality second or last.
It was not a new skill, of course (see: Industrial Revolution), but it had saved the world (ironically enough, from very well organized opposition).
This is an ignorant statement at best and at worst fucking stupid. I choose to send my kids to a catholic school because it is a better school with good parish support. The child in [this case mine] is the centre of the decision and if there was a chance of harm any greater than in the secular school system I would not send them there.
I am at heart an agnostic cultural Catholic as the majority of us who attend Mass are and really we don’t always listen to the hierarchy.
Remember the catholic church is a wide church with many strains of thinking, we are not a fundamental American Bible Bashing Cult that demands everyone thinks the same. Of course the church is not 100% good, it is after all a bunch of humans with all the failings that come with that.
I cannot and will not defend the assholes who molested children or covered it up, they deserve the full weight of the law and eternal condemnation from all us (although I am against the death penalty child molesters make me rethink this). I will always fight for uncovering the people behind this and have. But to paint all that are members of the church as complicit is just fucking stupid.
Am I to say that ALL Americans are fuckwits because they invaded Granada or that US government knowingly allowed people to get experimented on?
Except of course I’m sure that that’s exactly what all the other parents whose children got molested generally said.
And what difference does that make? The Church has acted as a unified whole when it comes to shielding child molesters.
As has already been repeatedly pointed out, for multiple reasons the analogy between governments and the Church doesn’t work.
You could say the same of state sponsored child abuse such as happened all over the world. It is when the populous decides not to question and involve themselves that issues such as child abuse etc happens. In today’s world [in Aus at least] we as parents and members of the community are heavily involved in the day to day running of the parish. In the past it was the priest today it is the members. This is a fundamental change and as such I have no qualms in sending my kids to a catholic school or allowing them to be members of scouts, or be coached on a basketball team.
It makes a huge difference, when people attack the anyone who is a member then it becomes personal. Yes the hierarchy of the church that covered this up and allowed it to happen should hung drawn and quartered.
Still not convinced of this argument.
I don’t accept that the government is some entity that exists beyond moral judgement. It is a representation of the people and as such should be held accountable when it does something wrong as well.
How can we say the government shouldn’t act morally when the very law that they are based on is at heart moral?
I am not an apologist for the church, never have been and never will be but do not condemn my choices and those of others to still be involved in it.
And yet part of the fees you pay to your school go to support that hierarchy, even if it just to support the local priest. That is the point that is being made. If I found out the pre-school I send my kids to was run by an organization that had a history of systematically protecting and enabling child abusers, I would pull them from it even if I thought it was the best school around for two reasons: 1) I do not wish to support such an organization unless I am convinced it has changed and 2) I could not trust the organization.
We do not get to choose not to associate with a government, we can only work to change them. No one has to be a member of any church.
Until the laity start holding the church accountable, they will continue to deny and protect the guilty. Why would they do otherwise?
It’s all the homosexuals’ fault.
A few years back the head of a local (Dominican) Catholic orphanage was suspected of molesting his charges. A married couple that worked for the orphanage (I am not sure if both did) decided to blackmail the pedophile. He decided to do what any decent person would do: he killed them, dismembered them and put them in a metal drum which he disposed of in a remote area.
When the whole thing came out our “dear” local cardinal blamed it all on the homos.
I am an atheist, but I could have remained on friendly terms with the church, unfortunately it has given me no reason to have any respect for the church in which I was born, raised and educated into.
Well this is where pragmatism beats idealism. I look at what value for money for money I get and what school will best support my children, academically and sporting wise. It is the same argument I use when i purchase an iPhone but on a larger scale.
And I do think that the church has changed enough? No, not enough at this stage. But I do still think that it is a safe environment for my kids.
The laity is holding the church accountable, there are many groups who have left in protest and many who are trying to change it from the inside and then there are some who really don’t give a toss and stumble through life with black tape over their eyes.
Of course you get to choose not to associate with a government, leave the USA and move somewhere else and don’t say you can’t, of course you can. OH would that mean leaving your roots, your family, your culture etc?
I get the arguments and totally understand your perspective, heck I even respect it but for me I make my choices and I can sleep at might with them.
I suppose I could move to Somalia, but where else can I go without a government? Sure, I could move to a country with a government, but tell me which one is morally pure? It isn’t yours, it isn’t mine, but I would say that both of them are much more accountable than the Catholic Church.
Well any group of humans is going to form some kind of organisational control, it is in a our nature. So government is inevitable when a group of humans get together.
Is the church accountable for it’s sins? Yep sure is to the highest power there is, God but this does not solve the earthly issues. All priests and those responsible for the cover up should be pursued by the governmental police powers to full extant of the law. Please do not expect any organisation to perform a witch hunt on it’s own members, none have so far and see no reason for this to change. People should be lobbying government to pursue the evil doers as they are meant to do.
I don’t see government handing over wrong doers to the courts very often, do you?
You bet you socks I expect an organisation that claims to be what the RCC claims to be to stop at absolutely nothing to root out and punish wrong doers in its midst. Instead, the entire organisation, from top to bottom including the current pope in a previous capacity, actively conspired to pervert the course of justice across the world.
In a just world the RCC would be treated for what it is - a massive conspiracy against humanity - broken up and any in a position of authority who had not done their utmost (regardless of church regs and self-serving mumbo-jumbo) to ensure malefactors were punished should go to jail.
I would favour an interntional court for crimes against humanity where they take their place in a court next to bankers.
Question: Why do people assume that a Church which places so much emphasis on confession, repentance and absolution would “root out” and punish child molesters? Seems rather contrary to their raison d’être, actually. They are there to provide a path to forgiveness and sanctuary, not punishment. So why are we surprised when they forgive child molesting clergy and help them avoid punishment?
The Church doesn’t claim to be made up of good people. On the contrary, they claim to be made up of sinners.
Sometimes, when people tell you who they are, you should believe them.
Because the church also claims to be Christian. The Bible is very explicit about how to handle both one’s own sins, and other Christians who were repetitive sinners. That involves the sinner obtaining forgiveness from their victims before they can approach the altar, something that none of these priests did, yet they were allowed to act as priests. It also involves publicly naming and chastising any repeat offenders. In the entire history of the Church not a single priest has been publicly chastised for such an event until it became public knowledge through other routes. Exactly the opposite occurred: the offence was shielded from public knowledge in every way possible and held up as a paragons of virtue and given great authority.
Because the church holds itself up as an arbiter of moral standards, which is why it constantly speaks on issues of morality. It teaches that priests are representatives of God and are to be obeyed. There is no overlap between a moral authority and an organisation that not only fails to disclose crimes, but actively attempts to conceal the crimes, to assist the criminals in evading lawful secular authority and places the criminals into a position in which they are able to commit such crimes again and again.
Because nothing in Catholic doctrine suggest that any Catholic, priest or layman, who discovers a crime outside the confessional should assist in covering that crime up. There is nothing about a doctrine of confession, repentance and absolution that allows, much less requires, Catholics to become complicit in sinful and criminal acts.
Because the forgiveness of a sin does not in any way involve conspiring to protect the guilty. Had the priests merely been forgiven and nothing said, that might be excusable. But when the crimes were discovered the Church brought pressure to bear on victims and the families of the victims not to press charges, to the point of threatening them with eternal hellfire for reporting the crime to the police and actually castrating them for reporting the crime. The church also went to great lengths to move criminals rapists from the reach of the law and to move them to new locations in order to stymie police investigations.
Because forgiveness, especially for crimes of violence, gross sexual misconduct and offences against the Holy Spirit been automatic under Catholic doctrine. It involves serious penanaces which often involve confession to secular authorities. Yet far from being given such penances, the priests were not even defrocked, They committed violent, sexual acts against children within the Church building itself and were forgiven with no material punishment whatsoever and were assisted in committing such crime sin future. That isn’t in keeping with Catholic doctrine.
I could keep going for pages on the reasons why the Church was expected to act in this, but putting it simply your justification is utter bullshit. A doctrine of confession, repentance and absolution has no bearing at all on aiding and abetting crimes discovered outside of the confessional.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
It’s not a justification at all, Blake. It’s a statement that these people have been doing horrendous, odious, dreadful things for 2000 years, and I don’t understand why we’re surprised that they’re still doing them.
Theodosius, Hypatia, The Crusades, The Inquisition, the council of Toledo, mass genocide of Jews and pagans and aboriginal peoples on multiple continents, the Magdalene sisters, Jasenovac… castration and molestation fits well into the resume.
I’m not, at all, excusing them. I think the whole organization should be torn down by an international court for crimes against humanity. But I’m just not surprised, nor do I understand how anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of the Church can be surprised.
Maybe I’m just blinded by my Catholic upbringing, but for me this statement is where the Anti-Catholic train goes off the outrage tracks.
Resolved:
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The Catholic Church has committed untold horrors.
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The overarching sex scandal is a particularly atrocious series of acts.
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All those responsible or complicit, from the Pope down, should be held responsible and brought to justice. Forgiveness has nothing to do with it. Mercy and Justice are flip sides of the same coin.
Not Resolved:
- The entire membership of the Catholic Church is evil and the entire Catholic Church should be dismantled.
With good reason, people latch onto this series of evil acts and forget that the Catholic Church is the largest charitable organization in the world. That does not excuse these crimes. IMO, What that does is show the Catholic Church en toto is not an evil organization. It is an organization that does evil things. Snerk if you must, but there’s a difference. The evils should be purged, and the Church should be reformed. That is different from abolishing the Church and wishing it had never existed.
Re-stating the above,I am convinced the average Catholic priest is a force for good in this world. At the very least your every-day priest is not complicit in any way but monetarily or… organizationally? And, Even if his monetary contributions indirectly fuel this evil,… so? Should I stop being American because my tax dollars went to several unjust wars? I could renounce my citizenship and move somewhere else. It would be difficult, but do-able.
The church should be reformed, not abolished. Its social works and overall ideal goal of spreading love and peace on earth merit it that. Of course, one way of reforming the church is to quit in protest. But, that’s a very different matter than simply declaring the Church anathema to humanity and erasing its existence by fiat.
FTR, I am an atheist ex-Catholic.
If these were isolated incidents, or the cover ups were committed only by low level priests, I might agree. But this is so high up in the food chain, I think it’s irredeemably flawed. When the Pope himself is part of the problem, I just don’t know where to go within the organization to fix things. There’s no chain of command left (on the earthly plane, anyhow.)
But…sure. I am a compassionate woman. I am actually quite fond of several priests I know personally, and there certainly are some godly Catholics. So, how about we give them some time to get their house in order and prove to us that they, as an organization and as individuals, are committed to rooting out corruption and illegal activity? Give them some time, and if they don’t take care of the problem, I think someone else needs to.
How much time do you think we should give them? I think the clock is running out. I think hundreds of years is a lot of time to have given them.