Secular organisations; military, police, government; also did all those things. But they did them openly, and they stopped. At some point in history people stopped believing that such actions were excusable and demanded change, and they got it. By the late 20th century secular organisations in the developed world had stopped doing these horrific things.
What horrifies people is that the thing happened* in the 1980s*.
In a world where pretty much everyone in society had grown up agreeing that mutilation and rape and slavery and genocide were wrong… the church was not only still doing those horrific things, but was actively conspiring to hide them because they knew the public would horrified if they found out.
That’s the difference. It isn’t that bad things happened in the past and were justified. It is that bad things happened yesterday, and the people doing them knew that they were horrific and evil and, instead of stopping, they sort to cover up their evil acts. And they covered it up while holding themselves up as the arbiters of morality.
We agree there.
So you wouldn’t be shocked to discover tomorrow that the US government currently holds thousands of Black people in slavery, and that any senator or congressman can go down the fields and rape any slave they want whenever they want?
Because anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of the US government would know that they did such things in the past.
Nonetheless you would be shocked to discover this was happening right now because you have reason to believe that it was done the past when it was done openly and with social approval. To discover that it was still being done today, with great efforts to maintain secrecy and with full knowledge that the 99% of people would be horrified.
Since I’ve been saying this at least since the days of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, if not since some even earlier church scandal, my mind is already going Zzzzzz… at the thought of having to type this out yet one more time.
Part of repentance is accepting that there may be a price to be paid for your actions, and coming to terms with the need to pay a legitimate price. Someone who’s committed the sorts of sins that require a position of power or trust can and should be welcomed back to the flock after their repentance, but part of that price is they don’t get to continue as or be restored to their positions as shepherds.
If the sinner has committed deeds that are crimes under the secular law, then unless the church takes the position that classifying those deeds as crimes is a grave injustice, the sinner must be turned over to the secular authorities to pay that portion of the price, and the church must cooperate with those authorities in sharing what information it has on the alleged crimes.
I’d think this would be pretty basic stuff. But apparently it’s not.
ETA: OK, I’ve read your further posts, but I’d say that it’s the history of the RCC, not any emphasis on confession, repentance, and absolution, that makes its current behavior predictable.
This is actually an interesting take on the problem. How did the CC deal with the last major scandal that wouldn’t go away, the corruption in simony and indulgences in 1600 ? Two words: schism and protestantism.
I would be shocked by that, because they, as far as I know, stopped doing it 150 years ago.
I don’t see any evidence that the Catholic Church ever took a reprieve from doing horrific things, so it doesn’t surprise me that they’re still doing horrific things.
The National Socialist Party has committed untold horrors.
All those responsible or complicit, from the Fuhrer 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 Nazi Party is evil and the entire Nazi Party should be dismantled.
With good reason, people latch onto this series of evil acts and forget that the Nazi Party is the largest is the largest charitable organization in the world. That does not excuse these crimes. IMO, What that does is show the Nazi Party 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 Party should be reformed. That is different from abolishing the Party and wishing it had never existed.
Utter bullshit in my not so humble opinion.
When an organisation commits evil acts, acts that it knows to be so evil that it has to hide them from the rest of society. When that organisation covers up those acts and fights tooth and nail against compensating victims. When it refuses hand over for prosecution members that it *knows *are guilty of heinous crimes. When it threatens witnesses to these crimes with years of torture if the come forward. When it kills victims of these crimes and literally buries the bodies in the cellar and makes no effort to identify the killers or those who buried the corpses. When it castrates victims iof these crimes as punishment for coming forward. When this evil is indulged in and/or abetted by members of the heirachy from the laity to the Pop himself.
When an organisation is so knowingly, premeditaively evil, so bankrupt, so cruel and utterly unrepentant that it can behave in that way.
When an organisation reaches that level, then anyone who gives money to it is evil. Anyone who legitimises that organisation by literally bowing to the authority of the organistion. Those people are evil. These people are legitimising and funding an organistaion that they *know *is going to use that legitimacy and that money to place more men and women into a position where they can rape little children.
This idea that someone can give money to a terrorist organisation and sends them letters telling them how wonderful they are and then say “Oh I don’t know what they do with the money.” That is bullshit of the highest degree. The person who funds the evil organisation is evil. The person who tells it that it is doing a good job, is evil. I don’t give a fuck if the IRA ran soup kitchens or if Al Queda operates an orphan’s and widow’s fund shelter. I don’t give a shit that the Nazi party ran animal shelters. It is utterly irrelevant if the Catholic Church operates charities. The organisation is evil, is utterly unrepentant about past evil acts, is protecting the evildoers right now and is committing evil acts right now.
Anyone who gives them money, comfort and legitimacy is funding, aiding and legitimising their evil. If their were no alternative charities that people could give money to your argument might have just a shred of credibility. But in the world as it is, it is lilly-livered, rationalising horseshit from top to bottom
This has already been thoroughly debunked in this thread alone.
Where are you going to go that is not just as bad? There are a million churches that are demonstrably less evil than the RCC.
You need some form of government, so you have to make a choice to go with the best one. You don’t need a church at all, and there is certainly no justification in going with what appears to be the worst one.
It takes a great effort and great hardship to move to another country. It take sno effort and no hardship not to give money to an organisation that you know will use that money to fund evil acts against children.
There is simply no legitimacy in comparing government to religion.
The Nazi Party should be reformed, not abolished. Its social works and overall ideal goal of spreading enlightenment and peace on earth merit it that. Of course, one way of reforming the Party is to quit in protest. But, that’s a very different matter than simply declaring the Party anathema to humanity and erasing its existence by fiat.
Most people believed that the Church stopped doing evil things a long time ago too, with some justification.
As with any other organisation there were individual scandals, but no evidence that organised rape, murder and mutilation was being both practiced and condoned while being publicly disavowed.
I would argue that the Catholic Church should indeed be dismantled - that with the exception of each local church building and the property it sits on, everything owned by the church as an organization (as distinct from anything actually held in the name of the local congregation) should be sold off, the proceeds distributed to those of its victims who are still alive, and their records preserved and opened to the public so that there would be no barriers to prosecuting or suing those that have it coming.
Then the actual Church laity would be in a position to re-make the Church in whatever fashion they so chose. As things stand, of course, the laity lack authority or even high-level input into the decisions the RCC makes on their behalf. You’re just passengers on a ship that’s fully owned and operated by a self-perpetuating hierarchy that shouldn’t be trusted to run a lemonade stand. I’m sure that the people who still feel a sense of attachment and loyalty to the Catholic Church could easily come up with a far better organizational structure.
I do not give money to the Catholic Church anymore, so it is a good thing I am not utterly evil. At least I’d be in good company, what with 1/6 of the entire world. Of course, I guess it’s possible for that much of the world to be irredeemably evil.
More responses to come later. I have better things to do on a Friday night than to wipe spittle off my glasses.
I don’t think anyone ever used the word irredeemable.
But it wasn’'t many centuries ago that 2/3 of the world’s population engaged in slavery.
What does that tell us?
Oh that’s right. It tells us that slavery is a good thing and not at all evil. Because if more than 1/6 of the world’s population does something, it can’t be wrong.
Well, that’s the thing. There’s no equivalent to the first amendment rule in Catholicism. One can protest the political system that one contributes to and still remain a member of it. In fact, political systems that allow for dissent from the party lines are the only ones worth joining. In Catholicism, expulsion is threatened for anyone that dares question the authority of the Church.
As for the Godwinning: the Nazi party advocates essentially the opposite of charity. Namely, that those that do not have the qualities to succeed do not deserve to succeed. Appropriately, they were supported in that by the Catholic Church in Concordat in exchange for the Reich making concessions to faith schools.
There are other incongruities: Hamas has legitimate functions as a charitable organisation, but nationalism is presumably their primary objective. The US officially espouses an individualistic culture, tying for lifespan with Cuba, yet tops international lists of (personal) charitable aid and volunteer work.
Actually, no, I was merely making a remark on the fact that you seem to have no second thoughts with calling one billion people on the earth evil. Not that their actions are evil, or that they belong to an evil organization, but that those people are all in essence evil. Still, I can see how my writing would make you think that though. It’s my bad for writing such ambiguous bullshit nonsense. With that said, let’s not distract from the main issue too much. Moving on.
I am not as skilled a writer as you, so I shall break this down piece by piece.
Pause. At first I thought this was one of the worst Godwins in the history of the board, but, then I realized. It’s not Godwinning if you are actually comparing the Catholic Church to the Nazi party. This you seem to be doing with great zeal. Needless to say, I disagree that the Catholic Church is as evil as the Nazis, but you’re entitled to your opinion, and, in any case, this is fuel enough for another thread. Carry on.
I think this is a good argument, just taken too far. I just can’t see how giving money to a school bake school at a local Catholic ES makes somebody evil. Not just committing an unknowingly evil-act evil, but becoming evil people, like, goatee-wearing identical twin evil. I actually agree with the main thrust of your argument though. Unless absolutely guaranteed that the money will go to purely charitable purposes, or to local purposes where one can be certain there are no diddling priests, then certainly one should not give money to the Catholic Church, as that would indeed be abetting evil behavior. Like I said, I don’t give money to the church anymore.
Yes, yes. Luckily again for me, I am not advocating either of these.
See, I don’t think it is. When the Catholic Church operates charities and does good in the world, it is upholding its central message. The Catholic Church, in theory, at least the one I was raised in, exists to spread love and mercy in the world. The Catholicism of Lewis, Chesterton, and modern-day, educated Jesuits, this religion would preach good will on earth and peace among men. Through a book cobbled together by man, the Church would preach the best of man. This is not a Church that should be summarized by murder, rape, and torture. It goes without saying that no amount of charity legitimizes or excuses the wrongs done. However, the Catholic Church is not Al Qaeda, nor is it the Nazi Party, no matter how eloquently you write it so.
You raise several good points, of which I don’t think I can make any valid counter-arguments. Moving on to the last point.
I will answer your question with a question. What exactly am I rationalizing? I am not rationalizing the Church’s behavior, and I am not rationalizing anything concerning those responsible. I said earlier that I am against dismantling the entire church, but RTFirefly raised a good argument. If it was necessary, which it very well seems to be at this point, to dismantle the entire leadership and start again from scratch in order to root out the vileness of these atrocities, then it should be done post-haste. With courtesies to WhyNot, I am all for bringing in an outside party to bring those accountable to justice. So, again, what exactly am I rationalizing? If I am rationalizing anything, I am rationalizing that the Catholic Church, when kept in keeping with its central message, even if that message is cobbled together from myths and unicorns, that Church, in some form or another, has a place in this world. If holding this opinion makes me evil, then to hell with me.
Well we have an impasse. Some people want the entire church shut down, it ain’t gunna happen.’
So that leaves us with a central question. “What do we do about it?”
Well I will continue to push for change from within, some people will leave etc. The Church as it’s central core is a pure message and if we can somehow move closer to that the world will be better.
Not really a relevant observation in this case, as through most of history the medical system had no authority to engage in acts like this. Doctors didn’t act with the power of the state at their backs back in the 19th century.
Nup not a priest. Change can come from within, it has in the past and will again.
Ensure that working with children policies are in place.
Vigilance on priest placements.
Involvement in my kids life.
Lots of things like that.
By doing this we make it hard for any pedophiles to practice. Whilst this does not resolve the issues of the past it does allow us to move forward and look to the future without abandoning our christian path and 1,600 years of cultural history.
The Catholic Church members who hid and allowed kids to get molested do need to be brought to justice and the full weight of the law should be applied to these monsters who have once again perverted the message of JC.
The Church will exist long after you and I are worm food, so again the question is what do we do?
Are you saying they are hypocrites? Because I think you have them dead to rights if that is where you’re going. Otherwise it is just an interesting observation. CUT OFF HIS FOOKIN’ BALLS!!!
That’s hardly fair, if you watch the documentary: Deliver Us From Evil, the parents of the children involved in child sex abuse were very supportive of the children, but the children were too ashamed or scared (for their parent’s sake) to reveal the truth to their parents. Seems like a second level “blaming the victim”.
You honestly think they’re either complicit in it or completely ignorant of their children? The children involved in the documentary did their best to shield their parents from the facts and one of the parents in the documentary shook with rage and grief just remembering their own impotence. My father was in the seminary with a guy that worked on the Murphy report and he came over for dinner one night. Not once did he suggest that the parents of victims were in on the abuse. It’s blaming the victim by proxy.