I’m sure the priest’s use incentive just like the lost puppy guy in the park or the guy with candy in the windowless van.
You gotta teach children some self preservation and to know some adults will lie to you. And if it feels weird tell a trusted adult.
If that is your priest, that is unfortunate.
If my son were an altar boy (I would never have allowed that particular “honor”) he would have went in with the brutal truth. Same with Boyscouts.
We can’t know all eventualities but…
Forewarned is fore-armed.
And, kinda of a weird time in RL and this zombie thread to respond.
What is that about?
I thought the same thing, but what with all the news about Francis, I can at least see why it would be on @HoneyBadgerDC 's mind. I’m still trying to figure out how this qualifies for “the most dumfuk question”.
The papacy was, originally, the successors to the emperors of Rome; a cruel, corrupt lot in general. All they had to do was to do better than those selfish buggers. Of course not all of them rose to that mark, but the mark nonetheless shows brightly.
Tiberius, Caligula, etc. and elsewhere: the Chinese princess who spent her days tearing bolts of silk to shreds while peasants starved, the Malay sultan whose exercise each morning consisted of whipping a slave to death; the dictators of the 20th century, the KGB princeling in the Kremlin, the moral cripple in Mar a Lago. Against these the throne of Saint Peter would be better filled with someone who should deny he’s infallible. In fact, these next few days/weeks of the conclave are a relief from some level of the official insistence that on this earth sits a human being who is infallible.
I don’t think infallible really means infallible. It is intended to give worshippers a solid guideline they can go by and have no fear they are making a bad decision. So whether they agree with it ir not God will not hold them responsible if they follow the teachings of the church. It is just about unification.
It’s not “dumfuck,” but I don’t see any reason they wouldn’t just use the same grooming techniques anyone else uses. They gradually desensitize them to it. And likely they haven’t been talked to about sex all that much. Especially not if they’re prepubescent. Parents don’t usually have that talk until later, and it usually involves a girl and a guy.
At most I’d suspect PIV to be talked about, which won’t be what these priests do. That was what I knew about sex early on.
I see no reason to think the kids being “very religious” would be a hinderance. If anything, that probably would delay these talks.
The cases I personally know of (friends and family were victims), the priests targeted children of parents who were very religious, very poor or both. In a case with a large number of victims, they were either orphans or the parents were drug addicts or alcoholics.
Even though I was a mark, scrawny, bookish kid, no one targeted me or my siblings. Because my parents weren’t in the thrall of the church or dependent on it for sustenance.
My aunt and uncle were unquestioningly devoted to the Church. They were not poor, nor poorly educated. But the priest correctly figured out that in their kids (my cousins) complained about abuse, my uncle-by-marriage would beat the living daylights out of the kids.
