That should have been withhold tithing? instead.
Sorry.
My question still stands, however.
Thanks
Q
My objection was with manny’s implication, perhaps through bad wording, that Guinastasia was a member of a child sex cult. There may be some basis for his suggestion that the hierarchy is operating like one, though I don’t agree and chalk up that appearance to a sheltered group suffering from basic human incompetence. Nuff said about it.
Thank you, manny. As a fallen (Wife: “You’re not ‘fallen.’ You’re ‘former’ now.”) Catholic I understand completely the issues and the self-flagellation. May I recommend the Evangelical Lutheran Church? It’s like Catholicism without the bullshit. If you want, you can join me in church Sunday morning after the ChiDope.
What? I’m the ONLY person who expects to be sober enough to drag his ass to church next Sunday? Hell, the old Catholic guilt keeps me going regardless–I’d be embarassed to have people think I was “sleeping it off.” 
Indeed…who do we wish to punish? The fabulously wealthy priests…the rich bishops and cardinals…the overpaid Catholic school teachers…the stinking rich inner city kids going to church financed schools…the Porche driving missionaries in 3rd world countries?
Saying “stop tithing” is a bit insulting and naive. The problem and solution is just a wee more complicated than that.
s/b ‘Who’
yes, ‘withhold tithing’ is correct
Who:
the Curia.
Why:
from what I can deduce, the Curia’s position is:
re pedophile clergy:
What are you stupid Americans upset about? This is not new.
to the US in general:
Thank you for the money. Now shut up.
As the RCC has continuing financial problems, I propose that the most direct way of getting their CONTINUED interest is to cut off the $7-8 Billion/year.
Then see if any epiphanies occur.
From a practical matter:
Parishes:
ORGANIZE!!! Form ‘The Laity of St.__________’ corporations.
Place your contributions into the CORPORATION’S bank account.
Pay salaries, building maintainance, etc BY THE CORPORATION.
Vote on whether to send money to whatever groups - just keep Rome out of the loop.
When the Curia sees its income drop below its operating costs, they will change.
IMO: and not before.
Yes, this is revolution. Very few feudal societies survive. Fewer should.
Guin - you were suggesting a bottom-up reformation. This would go a long way towards that.
FWIW, the RCC doesn’t have a formal tithing (10% of income) donation program…like say the LDS church has.
Most of the donations from parish members does not flow to Rome…(there are specific programs like Peter’s Pence that do support the Papal Office. Most of the donations stay in the parish, or go to support diocesan programs.
Of course, cutting off Rome doesn’t eliminate the problem either. Cardinal Law, for example, does not live in Rome. The solution to the problem is a bit more complicated. I do suspect that church donations will suffer…but much like cutting off aid to Iraq, it’s not the powerful who suffer the most when donations are cut off.
I can’t speak for the rest, but I have been waiting to hear from you.
Quasi
Do you know some incredibly corrupt priests or some school system that pays out the mouth? I know the statistics I’ve seen tend to show that catholic school teachers don’t get a helluva lotta $.
And re: stopping tithing, think of the beneficial programs that’ll hurt (think: homeless outreach, for one). It ain’t gonna do a whole lotta good.
Another one living in a zero tolerance diocese. I’m not a huge fan of Wuerl, but man, the guy had the balls to argue with a court in the Vatican when he refused to reinstate a priest found guilty of molesting a child. That takes balls, man.
manny, thank you. FWIW, I assumed you were simply being sarcastic. Even though you weren’t, I know what you mean. We’re all angry.
Our pastor spoke of this at Easter vigil. He compared these priests to an abscess, or a cancerous growth in the church. Reassignments aren’t the answer-what we need to do is take them, cut them out, and put them in treatment programs (if they haven’t acted on their impulses), or put them in rehab asylums or whatever they do with people like that. He said it was a disease, and that the Catholic church is not infallible-priests are human. And so, we need to remember not to blame our religion or assume every priest is going to do this. We need to treat the disease-and take care of it. But we shouldn’t lose faith in the good members of the priesthood. (No, he didn’t talk about the cover up, but merely what needs to be done-cut out the diseased parts and treat them accordingly.)
I don’t know…
btw, happyheathen, I don’t TITHE. I don’t give money to the church, since I’m almost broke. My parents give donations to our church, but I don’t ask how much-as it’s none of my business. Titheing has nothing to do with what I said. BTW, our recent problem with a priest was our pastor who was embezzeling millions from our parish and his previous one. Then he and his secretary blamed it on the Parish secretary, who, I believe, was dying of brain cancer. Of course, the bastard died of leukemia right after he confessed. Nice guy. :rolleyes:
I cannot speak for Catholics, since I am not Catholic. But withholding tithing sounds like a good plan. The church I formerly attended (I now go to a “reformed” version of it) started to screw things up royally, so a lot of us just withheld our tithing. We didn’t spend the money on other things, just withheld it and put it in savings, or whatever (to be given to the church later, if it ever cleaned up its act). Withholding tithing pissed the church off (they sent me a nasty letter saying I needed to pay up) but hell with that.
I reserve the right to give money to causes that are NOT screwing up. Sorry, it’s as simple as that. If members start withholding tithing, the Church will pay attention.
Um, dude-I think you’ve been whooshed…(beagledave is Catholic…and he’s being sarcastic.
Excuse the waste of bandwidth, but (and take it from a guy who suddenly has less than a thousand posts) I’m a happy boy!
Now… Where where we?
Quasi
We were in that happy place where half the board is halfway disagreeing with the other half but everybody is being nice about it.
At least manhattan kinda sorta made an apology. I guess that counts for something. But it should have been shorter. It should have gone “I made terrible, insulting comments. I am sorry for them and will do my best to see that I don’t say anything else like that again. Please forgive me.” There should have been no attempt to try and excuse himself because of “issues” he has.
As has been said, moderators are supposed to be held to a higher standard(like priests, huh?) I just found it sort of ironic that the reaction of the board administration was to close the thread and to sweep it under the rug as it were(even if only temporarily)
And we will forgive, as we should, but the hurt of the memory will not be forgotten.
Good enough for me.
Thanks, Manny!
And of course, administrators say that now that manhattan “has now been scolded and has apologized . . . we trust that’s the end of that.” Yeah, right. If I said what manhattan said and then made a similar “apology”, I doubt if the administrators would step in and say “that’s the end of that”. Higher standard my ass.
Like I said, I can make a prejudicial slur against someone and then try to weasel out of responsibility for my own actions the next day by blaming it on my “issues”, but that does nothing to unsay what I said.
But then, but then it’s the height of chutzpah to then add, “now that I’ve ‘apologized’ for what I said to you, I expect to hear nothing more from you about it. After all, that would be . . . (smirking smilie here) . . . insensitive.”
Nope. The correct word is “whom.” Just because a word comes first in the sentence does not mean it is the subject. In this case, “whom” is the object.
Why should we hold moderators to a higher standard at all? They claim to be regular posters, and they regularly display that they are such.
However, too often moderators are held to a higher standard during the regular course of they regular posting by other Dopers who misinterpret their words, partially due to that big “Moderator” under their names. Then, time must be taken out to explain that moderators have both a moderator hat and a user hat, and that moderators will formally announce when they are moderating.
But this doesn’t need to be the case! Why not take this horrible incident as an opportunity to make a slight adjustment? By simply changing that “Moderator” to “Member”, and giving each moderator a moderating sock (“TubaDiva - Administrator”, “Manhattan - Moderator”, etc.), these problems would be immensely relieved.
And if in the case that something of this incident’s order should happen again, that Member’s privileges could be reviewed, without affecting the Moderating arm of that poster.
The moderators around here do an excellent job, and it’s obvious that they spend a good deal of drawing the line between their moderating tasks and their involvement as regular Dopers. Why not make that distinction even easier for them?
As long as men have walked the earth, there has undoubtedly been pedophilia. This problem is not unique to the catholic church nor is it unique to our generation. But it simply wasn’t recognized or discussed openly in society prior to the 1980’s.
To expect the church to be more “progressive” than society with regards to this is a bit naive. Remember, most of the catholic church leaders hail from an era (post war) where our skeletons were closeted. Men didn’t admit they were attracted to other men. Women didn’t tell anyone that their perfect husbands beat them nightly. Girls didn’t tell anyone that dad fondled them. And boys didn’t tell that Fr. Jones was feeling them up before mass.
Partly because it was embarrassing to admit it. But also largely because people simply didn’t want to hear it.
So blame the church if you want. But recognize the deeper truth: the church is a mirror of society.
Well then, I don’t have to back down from my characterization of you either.
and I still say you don’t know a damn thing about child sex cults.
My hair almost stood on end when I saw what manhattan posted in the other thread.
What he said was ugly, but not, I think, perminantly damaging. Infortunately, I think the weak “sort of an appology” in this thread is actually more damaging.
manhattan I respect you, but when it’s time to appologise, just do it. Keep the explanation short, appologise, and be done. Afterwards, if you have things left to say, launch a new thread and start clean.