Bull it’s not about blame, it’s about taking responsibility as a parent. The signs are there, it is up to us who choose to become parents to learn what these are. It is something that I have done and everyone I know has. If someone chooses not to then they are shirking responsibility.
This is not to dilute what the abusers have done but I have seen too many stories where the parents and sometimes partners in parental abuse have chosen to live with their heads in the sand.
My point is simple, stay involved in your kid’s life and you will most probably stop any abuse before it occurs.
Except that parents are sometimes in denial, and kids are too. Especially when the abuser is someone who you’ve been raised to respect as a representative of God on earth. It is far easier to believe that the child is going through a phase than that the kindly Father Jones, who is so good with the parish kids, is actually a rapist.
Especially when the hierarchy has been guilty of the coverup.
What gets me is that these same people talk about the evils of gay marriage, abortion, and birth control.
The big problem is that so many people have been indoctrinated since birth to think that they’d lose something from leaving this nest of vipers.
If you had ever bothered to talk to the rank and file members most don’t have a problem with gay marriage, abortion, and birth control. Also besides some backwards people most people don’t think that priests are anything but a man who happens to know a lot about the bible.
I don’t fear that I will lose something, my relationship with god is mine not the church’s as it should be for all. Indoctrination is a strong word, it is not brain washing and if you argue it is then you don’t know what it is.
The argument I am making is that the church will continue to exists whether you like it or not so, what do we do?
I could run away and leave them to their own devices or I could try to change from within as I think and believe that good can come from the church if it is changed. Whilst there are cover ups etc I do not feel proud of what it is but I can feel optimistic [however misguided] that the future can look good.
You do know that part of the Catechism of the Church to which you belong is that the priest acts “In persona Christi”? Honestly, watch the documentary and tell me anything other than the fact that the parents were completely trusting of their priests and that the children revealed nothing of the torment to them. Given your comments earlier, I have to say we’re lucky neither of us has witnesses abuse firsthand, but you’re very willing to say that parents are “shirking responsibility” if they’re not aware their children have been raped.
Watch, while it continues over and over again to cause disasters and atrocities, as is its nature. It’s a major religion, so we’ll continue to let it run wild.
No, you are the “bull” here. My parents had no idea I was being abused, for about 5 years. And the abuse was happening under one of their roofs. I didn’t want them to know, so they didn’t know. Simple as that.
You are so very, very wrong and arrogant in your wrongness that it truly makes me fear for your children.
And with respect to birth control, that’s been the case since before Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in 1968.
That was 44 years ago. How’s that effort going to change the RCC hierarchy’s views on birth control? How many generations will it take?
And why should you expect to change the minds of the self-perpetuating hierarchy that controls the RCC any faster on any other issue?
The next scandal, the next abuse of power, will in all likelihood be something completely different than the current child molestation scandal. How are you going to keep that from happening, whatever it might be?
Leaving the RCC isn’t without effect. If enough people leave, then the reach and influence of the RCC is curtailed, and the harm it can do is reduced. But there’s really no way for the RCC laity to exercise any restraint from within over the RCC hierarchy.
Shall I take the silence on my opinions to mean that I can rest easy that nobody has stepped forward to wish me to hell, or that people are merely enjoying the easy pickings that are sisu’s arguments?
I mean shit, I feel like I’d rather be called a nonsense spouting-dingleberry elephant-anus than spend 30 minutes on some retarded internet argument only to be ignored like so many red-headed stepchilds.
You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing within the church to push for reforms from within – not what you think the Church is doing (or should do)?
Are you in some committee that meets with Church officials to review or propose rules regarding policies about children?
How do you maintain vigilance of priest placement?
Im’ glad to hear that you are involved in your children’s lives, which means that if they are abused and tell you about it, you can make a complaint.
You said you would be pushing for change from within, and it’s become “we” – as in “the Church”. Which is it?
How about castrating people with mild retardation in state-sponsored hospitals so they wouldn’t breed. Nope, not Nazi Germany. How about the US up to 1981. At least Sweden stopped their program in the 70s.
But that applies only to the actual administering of sacramental rites. It doesn’t mean that Catholics are expected to believe that everything a priest does is somehow sanctified “in persona Christi”.
I agree that many lay Catholics probably err in being too deferential to the moral authority of priests as some kind of infallible mouthpiece of God in ordinary matters, but to be fair, it is not official Catholic doctrine that is responsible for this misunderstanding.
Related readings: Cecil’s column on the bad popes, in which he points out the difference between an individual pope’s personal state of sin and the nonetheless-sanctified status of such a pope’s acts in his official sacramental capacity.
That wasn’t my point. Sisu was claiming that nobody really believes the priests are anything other than people that know the Bible well, but it’s an article of faith that they are a conduit for God on Earth at least a few times a week.
Good thing then that I didn’t criticize Catholics in general. There are the bishops who treat birth control as an anathema, and then there are the 90% of Catholics who use it. Though I doubt the percentage who support abortion rights is that high, at least until they need one, of course.
Since churchgoers don’t get to vote for their bishops, I can’t say that they should throw the bums out. If they oppose the cover up, they can vote with their feet or their pocketbooks.
I guess you disagree with the Jesuits then:
“Give me the child for the first 7 years, and I will give you the man”
If you think you have a direct relationship with God, good for you, but you don’t need to filter it through a corrupt hierarchy, do you?
Do what is happening in Europe - ignore them. Last report I heard there was a tremendous shortage of new nuns. Let them outsource everything to Africa where they still seem to care. No need to do a Henry VIII on their asses, just let them die a natural death as more and more people see the absurdity of their positions.
So, how did that work for Luther? The old guard ignores reformers at best and tells them to be quiet or be expelled at worst. (Since they can’t burn anyone on the stake anymore.)
What Catholics seem to do is to support the hierarchy with their dollars while ignoring their teaching. Which would be fine except for the large number who vote the way the hierarchy tells them to. Remember how some bishops said that Kerry couldn’t get communion (I think) because he supported abortion rights for others.
I’m sure the Pope believes in the Golden Rule - if a region of the country refused to support the Church financially while a bishop who supported the cover up was in office, he’d be off to a cushy job at the Vatican in no time.
But the two are not necessarily mutually contradictory. According to Catholic doctrine, the very limited and circumscribed sacramental role of the priest as “a conduit for God on Earth” does not in fact make him anything more than “a guy that knows the Bible well” whenever he’s not administering the sacraments.
I agree with you that many lay Catholics probably let veneration of the sacramental office of the priest slop over into excessive moral deference toward the priest in ordinary life, and ISTM that sisu probably underestimates the number of Catholics who get mixed up in this way.
I’m just pointing out that official Catholic doctrine does not support, much less require, this conflation of “priest acting in persona Christi” with “priest as general moral authority and/or official Good Person”. A priest is not automatically a good or wise person merely by virtue of his consecrated status as a sacramental officiant (any more than a communion wafer is automatically a health food by virtue of its consecrated status as the Body of Christ), and the church does not claim that he is entitled to any superior moral status because of it.
Abuse will happen. Around here some teachers and coaches have been accused of abuse.
The difference is that the civil authorities reported it immediately, got the person away from the kids, and made no effort to transfer him someplace else for another shot at new kids. And turning from signing the transfer papers to writing a sermon about how evil birth control and abortion is.
As for you, if you can’t prevent it (and you can’t) then you shouldn’t support it.