Hmmmmmm, this was unclear to me, but it turns out that there are actually two unfolding scandals involving the Vatican, three if you could the Catholic Church as a whole (and one involving the Pope directly)
quote:The Vatican has hit back at the media after allegations in a US newspaper that accused Pope Benedict XVI of failing to act over the alleged abuse of 200 deaf boys by a priest.
The claims come less than a week after the pope apologised for the abuse of children by the clergy in Ireland.
quote:The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict's household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.
Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him. Transcripts in the possession of the Guardian suggest that numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood.
It's bad right now for benedict. It's hit hard in Germany, faith in the catholic church is getting pretty piss-poor, and the standard apologist work-around (sorry, don't know how nicer to put that) is getting increasingly strained, even as people near ratzinger fall on their swords for him.
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
It's hitting core, committed churchgoers - at least if the stories I've read are accurate at all.
One woman - who was in one of the churches where one of the pedophile priests ended up said something along these lines:
If you get a divorce, you're barred from taking communion, but if you're a priest who molests a child, you get to *serve* communion.
I'm pretty sure this was a regular churchgoer and not a spokesperson for one of the victims' groups. It's a lot for people who believe in their church to swallow.
I think this is an even bigger problem for the Catholic church than previous scandals.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I am honestly completely flabbergasted that anyone the church deems to have done it (so not upon first accusation, but upon sufficient proof) is not immediately defrocked. Considering the millennia of church law and the history of the Catholic church have a separate legal system from secular systems, I can even kind of understand not reporting the perps to the police (although I certainly don't agree), but what I can't understand is how they continue to be priests at all. How is this not grounds for immediate expulsion? Forget continuing being priests - I don't understand why they are not excommunicated.
It is truly mystifying.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
My guess- and I don't have anything solid to back this up, other than what I've heard second- and third-hand, is that the Catholic Church is facing an increasing crisis in maintaining the numbers of the priesthood. Its membership is looking older and older, and it's increasingly difficult to find young men who are interested in spending several years in school to enter a life of relative poverty and celibacy. The scandals also perpetuate the crisis; how attractive can it be to join a group that used to be highly resepcted but is increasingly viewed by the public with suspicion?
Viewed through this lens, I suspect the attempts to keep accused priests might be viewed as short-sighted and self-defeating attempts to maintain numbers in the clergy.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
To believe that would require a very cynical view.
I don't expect to get an answer to this, because no one with the authority or ability to give an authoritative answer posts here. I can imagine reasons as well as anyone, reasons that range from the charitable from the cynical. But those are all after the fact, and I think they say more about the person imagining them than about their subject.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: My guess- and I don't have anything solid to back this up, other than what I've heard second- and third-hand, is that the Catholic Church is facing an increasing crisis in maintaining the numbers of the priesthood. Its membership is looking older and older, and it's increasingly difficult to find young men who are interested in spending several years in school to enter a life of relative poverty and celibacy. The scandals also perpetuate the crisis; how attractive can it be to join a group that used to be highly resepcted but is increasingly viewed by the public with suspicion?
Viewed through this lens, I suspect the attempts to keep accused priests might be viewed as short-sighted and self-defeating attempts to maintain numbers in the clergy.
You said exactly what I was going to say. It's enough of a struggle to become a priest, with only the reward of status as motivation. Now? Even if I were so inclined, I'd avoid becoming a priest just because I don't want the world to see me as a child molester.
The Church is dying, and good riddance.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by katharina: I am honestly completely flabbergasted that anyone the church deems to have done it (so not upon first accusation, but upon sufficient proof) is not immediately defrocked. Considering the millennia of church law and the history of the Catholic church have a separate legal system from secular systems, I can even kind of understand not reporting the perps to the police (although I certainly don't agree), but what I can't understand is how they continue to be priests at all. How is this not grounds for immediate expulsion? Forget continuing being priests - I don't understand why they are not excommunicated.
It is truly mystifying.
Not really. If they excommunicated every priest who molested kids (or enabled pedophiles), they'd have nobody left. Look at the incredible reach of the scandal in Ireland alone, much less in poorer countries with less ability to investigate or resist Church pressure.
This is the completely unsurprising consequence of putting sexually repressed men in positions of authority over kids. Hopefully the Church realizes that if even their own priests have trouble remaining celibate, they shouldn't expect that from the developing world. Maybe it'll even lead to a revocation of their idiotic stances on birth control and abortion.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
How about their completely outdated stance on divorce? it's so bad that even a lot of diehard catholics I know will turn a blind eye to carefully relabeling and approving divorces as annulments because surprise surprise they're in an unsalvagable marriage and even their priests don't want to see them forced into a state of spat-upon deviant labeling if they ever wanna have a marriage again.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: Viewed through this lens, I suspect the attempts to keep accused priests might be viewed as short-sighted and self-defeating attempts to maintain numbers in the clergy.
Sterling, I can see why you might think this, but it ignores the fact that sexual abuse and the cover-up has been going on for generations. Long before there was a shortage of priests. Long before, the secularization of society. What is new is that people aren't keeping quiet about it anymore.
ETA: If any of you are really interested in learning more about this, I would highly recommend the book Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse by Thomas P. Doyle, A.W. Richard Sipe, and Patrick J. Wall. Contrary to the title, this is not so much a thrilling, DaVinci Code kind of book, but an academic study looking a how the Church had dealt (or not) with this from the beginning.
[ March 27, 2010, 05:34 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by michaele8 (Member # 6608) on :
Hey, things are better in a way today for young Catholic boys than they were a few years back. Ever hear of the Castrati? Thousands of Italian boys were castrated so they could sing in church choirs since the catholics believed that women should not be heard in church. Boys were strapped down, starngled to make them pass out and then had their manhood wacked off. many died, most did not make it to the most prestigious positions, but a few were able to make their parents and priests proud.
I believe that while the ban on women in choirs eventually made these castrated boys obsolete that the Catholic church did not actually come out and ban it until late in the 19th Century or early in the 20th.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Castration only removes the testies afaik your still got your ability to 'rise'.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: So many more than two:
Two current stories involving the Vatican in March, I guess I meant. I was aware that there were previous scandals afoot.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Religious scandals involving priests go back as far as Chaucer. The Church in denial and worried more about the image of the church than the abused is not new. We can only hope its changing.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by katharina: I am honestly completely flabbergasted that anyone the church deems to have done it (so not upon first accusation, but upon sufficient proof) is not immediately defrocked. Considering the millennia of church law and the history of the Catholic church have a separate legal system from secular systems, I can even kind of understand not reporting the perps to the police (although I certainly don't agree), but what I can't understand is how they continue to be priests at all. How is this not grounds for immediate expulsion? Forget continuing being priests - I don't understand why they are not excommunicated.
It is truly mystifying.
The church can enforce restrictions on the behavior of priests that it cannot on former priests. If that were being done consistently, then keeping that disciplinary authority over the offenders would be a good thing to do.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by katharina: To believe that would require a very cynical view.
I don't expect to get an answer to this, because no one with the authority or ability to give an authoritative answer posts here. I can imagine reasons as well as anyone, reasons that range from the charitable from the cynical. But those are all after the fact, and I think they say more about the person imagining them than about their subject.
Impressive. I don't know that I've seen someone condescend to an entire thread before.
There's nothing particularly cynical about assuming the Church has a strong vested interest in maintaining the rosters of the priesthood. Or even that facing a choice between flawed servants and none at all, some would choose the former. The belief that the sinner can change and cease to sin is fundamental to Catholicism. And it's a frequently visible facet of human nature to fool ourselves that a course of action that seems best for us is the course of action that's best for the greater good, if there's any hook to hang the idea upon.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: There's nothing particularly cynical about assuming the Church has a strong vested interest in maintaining the rosters of the priesthood.
I don't think that this is really so much a factor. Given the number of abusive priests (small considering the damage that they did) it wouldn't have made that much of a dent. Also, many priests were basically retired by the time their abuses came to light.
quote: The belief that the sinner can change and cease to sin is fundamental to Catholicism.
This, I think , is a key issue. In a culture where any sexual expression is considered sinful the distinction between different sexual "sins" can become. Sexually abusing a child was lumped in with sex with women (consenting or coerced) or even masturbation and often treated similarly. The fact the the rate of recidivism for pedophiles is overwhelming, that it is a disorder that, at this point, has not real cure and that it is a crime got lost.
And in the urgency to "protect" the dignity of the "Church"* the victims also got lost.
*"Church is in "" because the Church is also the victims - just as much as the priests and the bishops. They were not protected.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lalo: Not really. If they excommunicated every priest who molested kids (or enabled pedophiles), they'd have nobody left.
Yeah I want to know how this is in any way true btw
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I'm not sure I understand that logic, Dana. It seems to me that expelling the priest significantly reduces the opportunity for abuse; retaining the priest suggests that the church prioritizes "repairing" a broken priest over protecting parishoners from rape.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
In theory, the reassigned priest could be given assignments where it would be completely impossible for him to reoffend. For example, he could be given an assignment with no interaction with children and be strictly monitored by his superiors. This could, theoretically, be more strict than any parole requirements. However, if they just excommunicated him, they would have no standing and that priest could go and grab a kid off the street or whatever. Obviously, that was not what was done, so the effectiveness of such a response can not be determined.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Tom, remaining a priest does not have to mean being assigned to a parish.
Scholarette, I know of some cases where that is how it was handled. The offenders were sent to a monastery, where they serve in adminstrative postitions with no contact with children. They aren't allowed out of the cloistered areas unless accompanied by two other monks. They are considerably better supervised than any parole or probabtion officer would be able to manage, and will be for the rest of their lives.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Bear in mind that remaining a priest has in quite a few of these cases ultimately meant being assigned the care of children. Sure, it doesn't have to; there can be the equivalent of military tribunals for clergy, if everyone involved decides to play nice. But...
Not letting the guy remain a priest harms no innocent person involved. The only thing you're protecting by keeping mum and locking the guy away in a monastery until someone forgets why he's there and puts him in charge of the childcare services is everyone's reputations, and I think what we're seeing here is evidence enough that the long-term damage to reputation is actually worse if the "lock the guy away in our own care, but quietly" approach is mishandled.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I don't think reputation was the only concern in the cases I mentioned.
And there was no "keeping mum" involved. The victims were involved in the investigation process, were not pressured to keep quiet, and their counseling expenses were paid by the church.
The situation did not come to light until it was too late for criminal prosecution, so if the church had just kicked the guys out there would have been nothing preventing them from moving to another state and taking a childcare job there. No criminal record, and this was before sex-offender registries anyway.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:The situation did not come to light until it was too late for criminal prosecution...
This is, I will freely concede, a valid rationale; if there is no civil action available, clerical discipline's certainly better than nothing.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
A priest can be forbidden from administering Sacraments, or assigned to or forbidden from certain duties. I don't think that priests can be unmade (laicized) except in very particular circumstance usually when they have asked to be released from their vows.
[ March 29, 2010, 03:11 AM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Lalo: Not really. If they excommunicated every priest who molested kids (or enabled pedophiles), they'd have nobody left.
Yeah I want to know how this is in any way true btw
Still waiting on this, or any of the other majorly sweeping defamations of the church.
The church has a lot to account for, and desperately needs to change their doofy policies, secretive cover-ups, neglect, choking dogmatic excuses and self-indemnifications, etc, if they don't want to continue a slide into collapse of the church's cultural authority and relevance, but nobody serves that effort with wide-brushed defamations like this.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
We also should probably not refer to allegations of abuse as "petty gossip" lest folks think we aren't taking this seriously and we should refrain from complaining about intimidation lest folks think that we have forgotten who the actual victims are.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:I don't think that priests can be unmade (laicized) except in very particular circumstance usually when they have asked to be released from their vows.
According to Google and Wikipedia (TIFWIIW), priests can be and have been defrocked.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Right. But defrocked priests are still priests. It also tends not to be a response to "sin" - although this is changing. I know it sounds contradictory, Catholicism is like that sometimes.
I think that defrocking would have been a good response in many cases. I think that turning them over to civil authorities would be better in cases where prosecution is still possible.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: We also should probably not refer to allegations of abuse as "petty gossip" lest folks think we aren't taking this seriously and we should refrain from complaining about intimidation lest folks think that we have forgotten who the actual victims are.
yeah, for sure I also think that the standard Internet Catholic Response has also not helped anything. Most of what I'm seeing across discussion boards and feeds is a bunch of 'you're not even worth trying to correct' with some more runaround.
yeah, GG?
Still, if there's another thing that the internet is good at, it's allowing the vitriol of rabidly anti-catholic nuts to float to the surface and poison the well. Same thing happens to the LDS.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
GG?
Samprimary, I think that you and I are looking at different Catholic Internet responses. Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Good game, I think.
No doubt on the latter, although the Sakeriver Catholic "Internet response" isn't too far off from that characterization though. Present company excepted (props for that).
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Samprimary, I think that you and I are looking at different Catholic Internet responses.
In any given situation where you've got at least a few good pro-church duders who are willing to move above the vitriol, you've got some good dialog. However, it mostly comes down to "yeah, there are some serious mistakes being made here."
The larger spectre of argumentation on the wider internet is, unfortunately, dominated by two groups:
1. Angry anti-catholics who think the church is EBIL, and 2. The angry catholic apologists who bite back emotionally.
the no. 2's are currently brandishing a tired routine of wounded victimization and unflinching apologism, as well as pulling out massive walls of incredibly dense dogma and saying 'see, this is why you don't know what you're talking about,' a technique notoriously ineffectual towards non-catholics who are already a little off-put by the church's tired bureaucratic mess. Or they just say something which invariably translates to 'you aren't worth my time.' Either strategy is fantastically countereffective.
The no. 1's are brandishing that whole fanatically weird 'the church is evil and eats babies and murders puppies' shtick which is awesomely, eyerollingly tired.
internet!
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Hmm...I suppose that I am pro-Church but think that we have really, badly, tragically screwed up this one. I think that there is a way back from that and, as a Catholic, it seems obvious to me that the way back includes confession, penance and reconciliation. Not denial, shifting the blame, or "spin control". We should be better at this; we have a ritual for this. For heaven's sake, it is even Lent. Lent is pretty much designed for repentance.
Edit to add: Also, I think that people do have legitimate reasons to be angry with the Church and that we have to deal with that. And if we don't want to give the general mockers and deriders ammunition, we should clean house.
[ March 29, 2010, 01:49 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Hmm...I suppose that I am pro-Church but think that we have really, badly, tragically screwed up this one. I think that there is a way back from that and, as a Catholic, it seems obvious to me that the way back includes confession, penance and reconciliation. Not denial, shifting the blame, or "spin control". We should be better at this; we have a ritual for this. For heaven's sake, it is even Lent. Lent is pretty much designed for repentance.
Confession, repentance, and reconciliation?
Great for making the abusers feel better about themselves, but what about the victims? Relying on internal Catholic remedies is what caused this cover-up problem in the first place. A bunch of those abusers probably confessed and repented after every incident, and then abused again and again, with the help of their superiors.
What's needed is civil justice. Isn't covering up crimes a crime in itself? Those people should surrender themselves to civil authority. They'll have all the time they like for repenting and reconciling with their victims from prison.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I should have been more clear. I was talking about using that pattern, but for the Church as a whole, not specifically the Sacrament of Reconciliation for individual priests.
We need, as a whole Church and starting at the top confess what we have done. By this I mean owning up to all of it. Not minimizing or denying or blaming the media or "secularization" or homosexuals or whatever. Those personally responsible for committing those crimes, or covering up those crimes or not stopping those crimes when one was responsible to protect children particularly need to confess that.
Penance, making reparations without being forced to by lawsuits, meeting with victims, apologizing, recognizing that we have failed at policing ourselves and getting help, submitting to civil justice whatever that may be - and so forth.
Then, with God's grace, Reconciliation might be possible.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:And if we don't want to give the general mockers and deriders ammunition, we should clean house.
Forget what other people might think. If the goal is to have a church that exists to succor the weak and support the faithful rather than to protect the tenured employees, then they need to clean house. It shouldn't be done just to avoid giving other people ammunition.
I wonder if part of the problem comes from having a professional, one-employer clergy. I imagine (and here I am imaging, not claiming to have knowledge) that it is harder for a boss to expel someone if he knows that by expelling this priest, he is stripping him of the only profession he has been trained for. It makes me think that maybe it shouldn't be a profession.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by swbarnes2: Great for making the abusers feel better about themselves, but what about the victims? Relying on internal Catholic remedies is what caused this cover-up problem in the first place.
While i agree with this, to what degree is relying on civil justice the 'solution?' It doesn't directly address the issue of the critically needed church reforms, and ... in a jaded, worst case scenario, allows the church to progress forward with a maintenance of its dysfunctional internals with just a few conveniently placed sacrifices.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
The Catholic Church is a hard organization to sum up as doing one thing of another. It's made up of so many different groups, pursuing many different, and at times, conflicting ends.
In this case, the hierarchy has a choice about what missions they want to pursue. Historically, they've often seemed much more interested in pursuing maintaining and increasing the power of the organization instead of being a force for good in the world. And honestly, that seems like the course they've decided on here as well.
That is not to say that the Catholic Church as a whole is doing this, though. I think that there is a lot of tension developing behind this apparent disparity in the goals of the hierarchy versus the goals of a lot of the rest of the Church, who care much less for the power and prestige of Bishops and Popes and more about carrying out the work of compassion, protection, etc. that they feel they are called to as a central part of their Catholic faith. Ironically, I think it is likely that the hierarchy's decision to use spin, denial, and concealment in order to preserve their power is going to lead in a greater reduction in the power of the Church hierarchy than if they humbled themselves in the face of their apparent sins. Unfortunately, I think this will come with a weakening in the ability of other parts of the Church to do good in the world.
---
I think one of the major indicators here is the Pope's attempt to lay the blame on increasing secularization. Increasing secularization has nothing to do with child molestation, nor does it have anything to do with the major problem, which is high church officials covering up the child molestation and providing a shield so that the priests can continue molesting the children entrusted to their care. It does, however, make it harder for the Church to get away with horrible things like this. And while it doesn't very much conflict with the mission of spreading the good stuff of the Catholic Church into the world, it does interfere with the high officials power.
Honestly, given the litany of abuses that make up a large part of the history of the Catholic hierarchy, it seems like they should be grateful for the rise in secularism. The diminishment of their power and the increase in scrutiny by the laity and people outside the Church has made the Catholic Church a much better (in terms of doing good and avoiding bad) organization.
But then, I don't know that I've ever seen a case where the leaders of a religion or other organization dedicated to doing good have been grateful for people finding out major problems in how they are doing things and forcing a change for the good that would not have otherwise occurred.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: There's nothing particularly cynical about assuming the Church has a strong vested interest in maintaining the rosters of the priesthood.
I don't think that this is really so much a factor. Given the number of abusive priests (small considering the damage that they did) it wouldn't have made that much of a dent. Also, many priests were basically retired by the time their abuses came to light.
You're probably right; I was mostly replying to the suggestion that the idea it could have played a role was "cynical". Sadly, within the spectrum of opinions on the matter, conceiving such a motivation seems almost optimistic in comparison. I do think it probably played a role in the modern-day scandal, but that's not to say that it couldn't be a small load added to the greater ongoing need to protect the Church's reputation, a need which could account for the secrecy within the larger timeframe.
I also agree that the ability to talk about abuse occurring within small, intimate units like the family and the parish is something of relatively recent origin.
quote:And in the urgency to "protect" the dignity of the "Church"* the victims also got lost.
I also have the sense that in many cases priests got shuffled around without much in the way of explanation to the communities that were receiving them as to why they were suddenly receiving this new priest. Even if one can understand (not necessarily to imply condone, or even sympathize with) the motivations of covering up clerical wrongdoing, the element of releasing a wolf on a new flock of sheep without warning is galling, to put it mildly.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
This is an article in the Irish Times that is several years old by now (2002). I have copied it entire but will excerpt and link to it if I can find it somewhere you don't have to be registered to read it. The author is one of the heroes of this battle and I don't think he would mind me posting it. Let me know if I need to take it down or if, should I have to take it down you want it via email.
quote: Seventeen years ago the Catholic Hierarchy, from local bishops to Vatican bureaucrats, had a major wake-up call. There was a clergy sexual-abuse time bomb of nuclear proportions ticking away in their midst and they had a choice as to what to do: risk peeking out of their isolated fortress, or build up a wall of defences to preserve their power and privilege. They chose the latter and they chose wrongly.
The institutional church's public statements then and now lead to a common denominator. They never really got the point of what it's all about and probably never will until the fundamental notions of clericalism, ecclesiastical power and even "church" are fully examined.
It's not about sinful priests who abuse. "Sin" and "evil" aren't the issue. Sexual abuse is abominable but it's the result of a compulsive sexual disorder, not the devil.
It's not about money grubbing victims and their greedy lawyers. I know hundreds of victims and all they ever wanted was honesty and a fair shake from the church's system. They turned to the civil courts only in utter frustration after being slammed around by an uncaring ecclesiastical bureaucracy.
It's not about a Catholic-bashing secular press hell-bent on eroding Church teaching on sexual morality. The press and media are simply doing their job - telling the truth. And without them, this enormous cancer would never have been uncovered for what it really is.
It's not about a "current environment of pansexuality", as Vatican Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos asserted the other day. The moral trends of a society don't create sexual disorders any more than they breed a lust for ecclesiastical power and prestige.
It's not about blaming the English-speaking world, as the Vatican bureaucrats have unsuccessfully tried to do. That's blame shifting for sure because the problem is all over; it's just having a more difficult time breaking free of the ecclesiastical bonds in some countries than in others.
It's not about promoting homosexuality, attacking celibacy, supporting radical feminism or advocating a married priesthood. So then, what is it about? It is about the church.
There is a solid principle in political science that says the governing elite of an organisation will eventually think that it is the organisation. That's a mistake that the Catholic bishops have made: thinking that they alone are the church.
They are not and now the sex abuse meltdown has given voice to a mass of faithful Catholics who are angry, hurt, distrustful of their bishops and committed to reclaiming the church they think has been hijacked from them.
The Hierarchy is facing a faithful who have thrown off the infantile bonds of clerical control and grown up. They are demanding accountability and honesty.
So it's not just about priests who have sexually abused thousands of innocent people of both sexes throughout the Catholic world. It's really about a system driven by the bishops that has spiritually abused victims and non-victims alike by scrambling to protect itself rather than reaching out to comfort the afflicted.
The abuse continues. The public apologies and anguished expressions of regret mean little to the victimised thousands. As one victim said, "What's a public apology? They say it and then run and cook up more defence tactics." How many of the bishops sought out the victims, gone to their homes and sat down and listened to their pain and anger? Precious few, if any.
Since the present crisis started in 1984, the abuse victims and their loyal supporters have faced a formidable adversary.
As one US victim, Peter Isely, said: "The dioceses spent tens of millions of dollars on the highest priced lawyers and hired the best public relations firms to fight us. And what did we have? All we had was the truth." The truth is not just that the sex abuse and cover-up were as widespread as some claimed.
The real truth is the undeniable fact that the Catholic church is all of its members and the most important people in this church are those who are most rejected and farthest from the institutional throne rooms.
The church is not a series of fiefdoms whose populace exists to sustain the lord and his manor.
The Vatican has finally spoken. The other day it issued the Pope's address to priests worldwide, which the New York Times reports was neither written by nor announced by the Pope himself.
The statement and the presenting cardinal's deportment at the press conference confirm the assertion that they still don't get it.
Why is this statement such a disappointment? Because while it rightly focuses on the pain of the many good and faithful priests and bishops, it barely acknowledges the anguish of the thousands of victims, their families, friends and supporters, which is indescribable in its depth.
Cardinal Castrillon, the spokesman, appeared irritated when challenged by reporters. I suspect his irritation stemmed from fear at having his authority challenged. Clericalism at its worst.
Later on, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navaro-Valls said Cardinal Castrillon's comments could be considered an expression of the church's position on the issue.
Sorry, but the church's position on the issue is not being voiced by the Cardinal or the local bishops. It is being voiced by the by the abused, by their families, and by the thousands of angry Catholics, lay and cleric alike, who are fed up with the secrecy, the callousness, the arrogance and malignant inaction of their leadership.
It's not a problem with the church. The church is waking up. It's a problem with the leadership.
For those who are shocked at the criticism and even venom being heaped on the Hierarchy, there should be hope in the realisation that the Catholic Church is not about preserving the power and privileges of the ruling class.
It's about Jesus, who only showed his anger when confronting the antics of the religious leaders of his time who sadly had forgotten that they were the servants of the Almighty and not the other way around. It's about the same Jesus, compassionate and caring, who reached out to heal and give new life to the wounded, the sinner, the rejected.
• Father Thomas P. Doyle is chaplain with the US Air Force and is based in Germany, a canon lawyer and a long time advocate for clergy abuse victims
ETA: He is no longer a chaplain. This was written back in 2002 (though it seems to apply today).
[ March 29, 2010, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I think one of the major indicators here is the Pope's attempt to lay the blame on increasing secularization. Increasing secularization has nothing to do with child molestation, nor does it have anything to do with the major problem, which is high church officials covering up the child molestation and providing a shield so that the priests can continue molesting the children entrusted to their care. It does, however, make it harder for the Church to get away with horrible things like this. And while it doesn't very much conflict with the mission of spreading the good stuff of the Catholic Church into the world, it does interfere with the high officials power.
Yes, I've heard the arguments from some of the more conservative in the Catholic Church before that it's the recent secularization or liberalization of society/parishioners/church practice that is to blame for the scandals in the Church. It seems like another facet of the "halcyon golden days" falacy, frankly.
My gut feeling is that some of the reason for the large number of abuses has to be lain at the feet of Catholicism's views on sexuality. I suspect a lot of young men, harboring shame about their secret sexual feelings and having been told repeatedly that they risk damnation for having them, get the idea that if they devote their lives to God that surely He will take those feelings away from them, or at least help them to withstand their temptation. And instead they find themselves in a position of authority where it's even easier to pursue those temptations.
Unfortunately, when things get to this scale I do fear that it puts the ability of the Church to do good works in jeapordy. I can definitely imagine cases of significant need where some might decide that the presence of the clergy simply was not welcome. Events like the scandal with the founder of Covenant House suggest that at a minimum these scandals can be extremely disruptive to otherwise benign works.
I also feel that the Church has been more hesitant about promoting social justice since there were a number of high-profile attacks on members of the clergy in the late seventies and early eighties, like the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Sterling, I think that is correct. Sexual abuse by priests is not new - in fact has been going on for centuries. What is new is that people are talking about it.
Regarding social justice, I think - and this is purely speculation - that having a Pope that lived under the shadow of the Soviet Union gave the Vatican an allergy to anything that looked too much like socialism.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I don't think that's accurate, boots. Pope John Paul II was very involved in and supportive of many labor causes, Solidarity being the most prominent example.
My speculation is that this withdraw was in part due to it being associated with Vatican II and the drive towards a less authoritarian role for the hierarchy.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Honestly, given the litany of abuses that make up a large part of the history of the Catholic hierarchy, it seems like they should be grateful for the rise in secularism. The diminishment of their power and the increase in scrutiny by the laity and people outside the Church has made the Catholic Church a much better (in terms of doing good and avoiding bad) organization.
This is an interesting point, especially considering how it is probably true but the church would utterly detest the notion that it's better off because it's being policed by the rise of secularism.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Lalo: Not really. If they excommunicated every priest who molested kids (or enabled pedophiles), they'd have nobody left.
Yeah I want to know how this is in any way true btw
Still waiting on this, or any of the other majorly sweeping defamations of the church.
The church has a lot to account for, and desperately needs to change their doofy policies, secretive cover-ups, neglect, choking dogmatic excuses and self-indemnifications, etc, if they don't want to continue a slide into collapse of the church's cultural authority and relevance, but nobody serves that effort with wide-brushed defamations like this.
Whoa, chill. I haven't been active here for years, and you expect me to check this thread on the hour?
In any case, looking at your posts on this thread, it doesn't look like we disagree on much. You want civil justice to try these priests rather than backroom Catholic tribunals. You want massive internal reform of the Church, which I feel is the next best alternative to the Church becoming irrelevant to the modern world. And your main issue with me is that you feel that the vast majority of priests don't know about the molesters among them. Right?
I went to a Catholic high school. And I love the priests there, they're awesome people dedicated to making the world a better place. And there's not a single one of them who doesn't know EVERYTHING about the every other priest. If there were a molester among them, they'd know.
I don't think you'd disagree that knowingly permitting a past offender to work with children is enabling him, possibly to a criminal degree. The Church has done this, over and over again, to thousands of different parishes. Particularly given the common reason for moving priests, do you seriously believe nobody questioned why a priest was moved to their district? Do you think nobody knew? As far as I can tell, you're offended by the thought that this scandal extends beyond a tiny minority of molesters.
The Church is unfixably corrupt, and dreams that it'll reform itself are naive. For god's sake, look at Benedict's railings against liberals to get an idea of his desire for reform. The only solution I see is European -- that someday soon, the world will abandon religion and this corrupt institution will fade into irrelevance.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
The Catholic church is not the only religious organization out there. It isn't only Catholicism or nothing.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Lalo, I think that is an exageration. I know a lot of good priests who, even aware of the prevalence of sexual abuse, were genuinely shocked and hurt to find priests that they knew involved. Abusers are experts at hiding their crimes. And transfering from parish to parish is not at all unusual. This does not absolve those that did know and covered it up, of course.
quote:Originally posted by katharina: The Catholic church is not the only religious organization out there. It isn't only Catholicism or nothing.
Personally, I think it's much easier to move from religion to atheism. It's a tectonic shift in how to view the world, with clear and immediate differences in philosophy and consequence.
But moving from one religion to another? On what basis do you change your opinion? At some point, the believer would have to come up with a rationale for rejecting her old religion that somehow doesn't also apply to her new religion.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
That strikes me as throwing the baby out with the bath, but whatever works for you, Lalo.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: That strikes me as throwing the baby out with the bath, but whatever works for you, Lalo.
What baby is there among all this bathwater? There are good elements to the Church -- the Jesuits, the Missionaries of Charity -- but nothing that can't be better performed by a secular, accountable organization.
If nothing else, you should see the Church hierarchy as a vicious leech on whatever good comes out of the Church. Good things can still be done without Catholic dogma attached to it.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Here I would, again, disagree. Catholic dogma, when we get it right, can be wondrous. Our doctrine is not all bishops and Popes.
Again, I am glad that you have found what works for you.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Here I would, again, disagree. Catholic dogma, when we get it right, can be wondrous. Our doctrine is not all bishops and Popes.
Apprently, the "doctrine" is that people who try to help a 9-year-old incest victim get a medically-needed abortion are denied communion. The kinds of men who would impregnate a 9-year-old girl are allowed to serve it.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Here I would, again, disagree. Catholic dogma, when we get it right, can be wondrous. Our doctrine is not all bishops and Popes.
I'm Catholic, at least by birth and culture. And I'd argue that a huge part of our religion is tied up in Church hierarchy -- and even more so in stupid mandates against birth control, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, and so on. Hence why the Catholic League, for example, spends so much time and money lobbying against gays and abortion.
I really dislike Sarah Silverman, but she made a good point in a recent standup. If the Church really cared about Christianity... why don't they sell the Vatican? In other words, if the Church really believed in all that "wondrous" doctrine you celebrate, why isn't it a more Christian institution?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I would say to both of you that that is not, by a long shot, the whole of the Church. Yes, no question, there is plenty that we need to fix - I would say the same for just about any organization - but that is not all we are.
I don't know that we are going to agree on this and that is okay. If you like, I can refer you to some Catholic organizations that are doing good work. Again, if you have found something that works better for, that is great.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I would say to both of you that that is not, by a long shot, the whole of the Church. Yes, no question, there is plenty that we need to fix - I would say the same for just about any organization - but that is not all we are.
I don't know that we are going to agree on this and that is okay. If you like, I can refer you to some Catholic organizations that are doing good work. Again, if you have found something that works better for, that is great.
So because there are some good elements within the Church, it's worth saving the enormously disproportionate corruption attached to them?
Let's say this is your political party, completely hijacked by corrupt bureaucrats and caught in a huge child-rape scandal. Would you still vote for them? If this were your university, would you transfer out? If it were any organization but a religious one that attacked children and protected their rapists, wouldn't you decry it as corrupt and demand reforms that, if enacted, would essentially destroy and redefine the existing institution?
Your answer is exactly why I want to see the world move away from religion. Blind loyalty like yours -- seriously, "Yes, no question, there is plenty that we need to fix - I would say the same for just about any organization"? -- ensures that no reform of consequence will ever come to the Church.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I don't think it is as disproportionate as you think it is. Clearly. People who care and who work to change the institution and more likely to make real change than those who abandon it. I did not, for example, leave my country when we screwed up; I did what I could to correct it. And changing religions is not like changing political parties or universities. And I think you know that.
Have you been reading what I have written here? Did you read the article that I quoted? What makes you think that my loyalty is "blind"?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Lalo, I'd say it is a very good bet that boots, along with many other people, don't agree with your view of the extent of this problem.
For example, the idea that every priest is either a child molester or is complicit in the cover-up for them appears to me to be either ridiculously hyperbolic or downright delusional.
The Catholic Church is facing a serious problem and the hierarchy appears to be taking a very wrong path with it, but, while I doubt anyone would see me as a blind defender or either the Catholic Church or its high officials, I don't see this as anywhere close to being a situation where "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable solution.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I think it is a serious, deep-rooted, and tragic problem. I think that the clericalism and secrecy that allowed this problem to fester is also an enormous problem. And I understand the anger that would inspire the "burn it to the ground" attitude. But I don't think that Catholicism requires either clericalism or secrecy and that it can and will flourish without them while keeping that which is good. It won't be easy, but there are good people - like Fr. Doyle who are working tirelessly for this. He is as much the Church as any of the bishops.
I should add for full disclosure that Fr. Thomas Doyle is my cousin.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:And there's not a single one of them who doesn't know EVERYTHING about the every other priest.
This is a silly, silly statement.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Eh. I think it is an angry statement and there is justification for anger here.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Well, kmbboots, I admire that you've been keeping a very level and compassionate stance in this thread, so I apologize for injecting unnecessary snark.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
No problem and thanks. It is, clearly, not a true statement but when the cover-up goes all the way to the top, it does "infect" the whole Church. There are a lot of angry Catholics (and ex-Catholics) out there and they should be at least heard.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lalo: In any case, looking at your posts on this thread, it doesn't look like we disagree on much. You want civil justice to try these priests rather than backroom Catholic tribunals. You want massive internal reform of the Church, which I feel is the next best alternative to the Church becoming irrelevant to the modern world. And your main issue with me is that you feel that the vast majority of priests don't know about the molesters among them. Right?
What I want clarification on is your suggestion that if the church excommunicated every pedopriest, there would be none left. it implies that the church has literally nothing but child molester priests. what's the deal with that and why is it worthwhile dialog on the church? :/
quote:As far as I can tell, you're offended by the thought that this scandal extends beyond a tiny minority of molesters.
No, I acknowledge the systemic and institutional nature of the church's dysfunction and I too question through what indolences and malaldaptive processes reach so far as to make it so hard for them to make these changes when they are very greatly vital to the church's credibility and future as a social institution
quote:The Church is unfixably corrupt, and dreams that it'll reform itself are naive.
I don't believe that at all. It's not like the church has been in worse places than this, historically. More corrupt, more abusive, etc. Was it an unfixable institution then?
quote:For god's sake, look at Benedict's railings against liberals to get an idea of his desire for reform. The only solution I see is European -- that someday soon, the world will abandon religion and this corrupt institution will fade into irrelevance.
This is, for sure, the only solution you can conceive of?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
in other news: thanks ratzinger
quote:Pope Benedict, facing the worst crisis of his papacy as a sexual abuse scandal sweeps the Catholic church, declared today he would not be "intimidated" by "petty gossip"
At this point the church would probably be better served with total silence if this is how they're going to handle it.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Lalo, I'd say it is a very good bet that boots, along with many other people, don't agree with your view of the extent of this problem.
For example, the idea that every priest is either a child molester or is complicit in the cover-up for them appears to me to be either ridiculously hyperbolic or downright delusional.
The Catholic Church is facing a serious problem and the hierarchy appears to be taking a very wrong path with it, but, while I doubt anyone would see me as a blind defender or either the Catholic Church or its high officials, I don't see this as anywhere close to being a situation where "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable solution.
Of course not every priest knew about molestation, but it's a far more significant number than only those directly caught committing or covering up rape. And the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the more likely you are to find people who've committed or covered up rape.
Here's Andrew Sullivan on the subject. If you read his blog, there's a number of entries on the coverup, the faux-outrage of the Church against the "liberal media," and so on. Warning: he's angry about this as only a gay man can be.
But even this long-running child-molestation ring aside... why not burn the Church to the ground, metaphorically? Boots, I don't mean this as a rude question: what moral guidance has the Pope ever provided you? What role model does he play for you? What value is he, or any of the Vatican, in making the world a better place?
My mentor as a teenager was a saintly teacher at my high school, the most devout Catholic I've ever known. Easily the most patient man I've ever known. I baited him constantly, and he always responded calmly and with good humor. I suspect that when you think of Catholicism, you think of him. People like him (and you, I imagine) who are decent, loving, and dedicated to improving the lives of people around you. That's a huge part of what individual Catholic communities are about, and I think that's what you want to preserve.
But there's an enormous disconnect between you and the bureaucrats who run the Church. Honestly, I think the problem is that people identify with Catholicism, and attacks on the Church are internalized -- and rejected -- as attacks on individuals or communities. Likewise, these identity politics compel believers to subscribe to mandates against birth control and homosexuality that they wouldn't necessarily believe in without Church dogma.
Whether you have anything to do with it or not, corruption is very much a part of Catholicism. And since the Church is not in any way a democracy, you have almost no voice in who leads you or protects the priests who rape your children. Faced with an unrepentant Church of repressed old white men wearing bling, I can't imagine you wouldn't choose the (difficult) path of re-evaluating your identity and your religion.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Goodness, Lalo! The Pope isn't the Church. The Vatican isn't the Church. The Bishops are not the Church. Corruption is part of power
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
This is just more of kmb's usual response to any criticism of her religion: Anything she does not like is not part of it. It's a very complete form of No True Scotsman.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I'll correct that by saying that, while the Pope et al are certainly part of the Church, they are not more the Church than the rest of us.
Better?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
In a word, no.
Catholicism after the religious wars is defined by taking the Pope as its highest authority. You can't reasonably throw that out and still call yourself a Catholic; it's like throwing out celibacy and still calling yourself a Shaker. What you've got isn't Catholicism, or even Christianity, it's a vaguely Jesus-flavoured assertion of superior spirituality.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Which religious wars? And, no, the Pope isn't the highest authority or even the head of the Church.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
The religious wars that ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. I think you'll find that your interpretation of Catholic doctrine is the one which historically had fewer guns backing it. And before you object to that metric for deciding who is right, consider that when you abandon reasoning and evidence, as you claim to have done, as your principle, then any dispute of sufficient importance to at least one of the parts must be settled by force. The issue of whether the Pope was head of the Church has, indeed, been settled that way.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I am reasonably confident that Jesus is the head of the Church. And no need for guns as I don't need to convince you. Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Yes, yes. The next time Jesus gives actual orders or defines Catholic doctrine, be sure to notify everyone. In the meantime, rather than play games with words, how about looking at your church as it actually exists in consensus reality?
As for guns, I believe you may find that a sufficiently vehement denial of Catholic doctrine would lead to you being denied the sacraments, perchance even excommunicated. You would then have the choices of giving over your beliefs, lying about them (as you are doing right now, by omission), or getting some guns together and enforcing your point of view on the church. Or, of course, you could insist that you're still a Catholic except for those minor things like going to confession and suchlike details. Actually that would probably be your approach; it's not as though you believe anything, so why not?
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I am reasonably confident that Jesus is the head of the Church. And no need for guns as I don't need to convince you.
In another era, not long ago in the long history of humanity, your church would have tortured and burned you alive for your rejection of papal theological authority, as it did to lots of innocent people. And you think that's a joke?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I may quickly note that if it is true, that as KoM notes that kmbboots isn't actually Catholic (which has some merit I think), then it hardly makes sense to vent emotions of anger at her.
It would almost be like venting your anger toward the Chinese at Blayne or something. Stick to the calm reasoning.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by swbarnes2:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Here I would, again, disagree. Catholic dogma, when we get it right, can be wondrous. Our doctrine is not all bishops and Popes.
Apprently, the "doctrine" is that people who try to help a 9-year-old incest victim get a medically-needed abortion are denied communion. The kinds of men who would impregnate a 9-year-old girl are allowed to serve it.
In my book, swbarnes just won the thread. hard. What else is there to say, beyond what he said? I'm not saying other religious hierarchies aren't guilty of exactly the same problems. The Krishnas definitely are one. Quite a few religious groups, in general, have been.
That says something about, not just religions, but hierarchies, in my view. Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I'll correct that by saying that, while the Pope et al are certainly part of the Church, they are not more the Church than the rest of us.
Better?
wow, no, that's not true. like, not at all.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I may quickly note that if it is true, that as KoM notes that kmbboots isn't actually Catholic (which has some merit I think), then it hardly makes sense to vent emotions of anger at her.
It would almost be like venting your anger toward the Chinese at Blayne or something. Stick to the calm reasoning.
Honestly I've never gotten the logic for the anger that a lot of the evangelical atheists here seem to show towards people who believe in religion. Why would you be angry at these people?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
KoM, my beliefs haven't changed and were quite clearly expressed to my catechists before I converted to Catholicism. None of them had a problem endorsing my reception into full communion. Believe me, there are a whole lot of good Catholics ahead of me in the excommunication line should it come to that.
swbarnes, yes, torture and burning alive was bad. Still is. It was hardly the unique province of the Catholic Church, however, nor was it a uniquely religious punishment. And what I think is silly is KoM's assertion that I would need to take up arms to force my beliefs on anyone. Why, I wouldn't even resort to re-education camps.
steven, yes the situation with the nine-year-old was indeed wrong and tragic and horribly misguided. I believe I said so at the time. So did a lot of other Catholics.
Mucus, thanks (I think) but it is okay. As I wrote, lots of anger needs to be expressed and if I can help with that, great.
Samprimary, "For the body is not one member, but many.
15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. 16 And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? 18 But now hath God set the members each one of them in the body, even as it pleased him. 19 And if they were all one member, where were the body? 20 But now they are many members, but one body. 21 And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee: or again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. 22 Nay, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary: 23 and those parts of the body, which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness; 24 whereas our comely parts have no need: but God tempered the body together, giving more abundant honor to that part which lacked; 25 that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. 26 And whether one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it; or one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. 27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof. "
MrSquicky, I think that I get it. Faith is dangerous. Faith could be, just as easily - maybe more easily, and certainly has been and will be again used for evil purposes as good. There is no shield against faith in the wrong things, so faith in the right things is also dangerous. If I were an entirely different person, faith could lead me to be a freakin' Hutaree militia member. Of course, if I were inclined to be any kind of militia member, I could find a way to justify that, faith or no faith. Was it Steven Weinberg who said that good people will do good things and evil people will do evil things, but for good people to do evil things requires religion? Or something like that. There is some truth in that. But not the whole truth or even close.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Samprimary, "[stuff]"
Yes, I hate to put this so callously, but these are words in a book which in some ways define the intent of catholic hierarchy. The Pope is a person who is very much so observably and demonstrably in charge of the organization and wields massive power and influence of an organization which is quite obviously run by humans and as such experiences the travails and pitfalls of human error, greed, pride, fallibility, etc.
In spite of poetic resolve (which I think is loosely translated there anyway — 'for the body is one member, but many' only implies that anyone is part of the body of the church, not that all parts of the body of the church are of equal measure in the church, every body is part christ, etc) to identify each member of the church as an equal part of the church, it's only true in the same sense that the CEO of a company is 'not more the company' than a mailroom employee at a subsidiary in Tulsa.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: ... Why would you be angry at these people?
Depends on the person. Depends on the issue. I think you're going to have to be a lot more specific if you want anything better.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: swbarnes, yes, torture and burning alive was bad. Still is. It was hardly the unique province of the Catholic Church, however, nor was it a uniquely religious punishment.
You haven't understood anything. You trying to tell us what your church really is, when we can see the millions of faithful today, and the charming things that your church did over the course of most of its history, it's just not going to work. Obedience to the hierarchy is central to the history of the Catholic church, so much so that they tortured and burned people like you who denied it. That's the history. Those are the facts. You smile about it, as if the idea is so unthinkable as to be a joke, but it's not.
quote:steven, yes the situation with the nine-year-old was indeedwrong and tragic and horribly misguided. I believe I said so at the time. So did a lot of other Catholics.
You seem to be under the impression that your personal disavowal of a position means that it's not really a position of the Catholic church, even when it explicitly affirms it.
That's just not true. There are many, many people who disavow the noixious claims of the Catholic church. They call themselves something other than Catholic. If you take the label, you have to take some of the responsibility. You keep saying that the Catholic church is more than the hierarchy. Well, Catholic beliefs are more than the intersection of official doctrine and your personal beliefs.
quote:15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body.
This quote does not help you. If the eye can't be an ear, then the laity can't set doctrine like the Pope does. And if foot is limping, it's not the place of the ear to decide to cut off the foot. That's the brain's job, so to speak, and the ear needs to accept the brain's decisions without question, or the whole body fails.
You couldn't have picked a quote that more thoroughly embodies "You have a place, don't you dare step out of it" if you tried. This is what the hierarchy quotes to the laity when telling them to shut up and fill the offeratory.
quote:Of course, if I were inclined to be any kind of militia member, I could find a way to justify that, faith or no faith.
However, if you strove to believe in things only to the extent that they were falisifiable and well-evidenced, if you constantly reality-checked your beliefs, and occasionally threw away beliefs you discovered to be erroneous, the odds of you believing something destructively wrong would be far, far smaller. Some of those beliefs might be a bit unpleasant, but they would be correct, as opposed to pleasant and wrong.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I may quickly note that if it is true, that as KoM notes that kmbboots isn't actually Catholic (which has some merit I think), then it hardly makes sense to vent emotions of anger at her.
It would almost be like venting your anger toward the Chinese at Blayne or something. Stick to the calm reasoning.
No, she's Catholic -- or believes she is, anyway.
Swbarnes just nailed it exactly. KMBBoots, you seem like a really nice person and a really nice Christian, but you're not Catholic. In fact, the religion I've heard from you so far is... Protestant.
That's totally cool, but let's call a spade a spade. You're not Catholic, even if you want to identify as one.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
St. Paul was still Catholic when he disagreed with St. Peter (and won that argument. Hildegard of Bingham was still Catholic when she defied the canons. Yves Congar was still Catholic when he argued for ecumenicism. John Courtney Murray was still Catholic when he fought for a different relationship between Church and State, The laity that rejected the Arian heresy, still Catholic. The overwhelming majority of American Catholics who disagree with the official teaching on birth control and divorce, still Catholic. The list is as long as the history of the Church.
There is more to the difference between Catholic and Protestant than just the Pope. I am considered Catholic by my priest, by my sponsor, by the candidates and catechumens that I have mentored and by the Catholics that I, personally, have sponsored. Really, I, with the blessings of my parish, helped to teach others what being Catholic means. So, yes, I am responsible for what my Church does and responsible for trying to make it better. So go ahead and "yell" at me. Yelling is okay.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Here's Andrew Sullivan on the subject. If you read his blog, there's a number of entries on the coverup, the faux-outrage of the Church against the "liberal media," and so on. Warning: he's angry about this as only a gay man can be.
Actually the impression I've gotten, having read him for years, is that he's as angry about this as only a Catholic man can (and should) be. His sexual orientation has nothing to do with his posts on this subject, but his deep love for the Church most definitely does.
What this tells the congregation is that the Catholic church cannot be trusted with your children and seems more annoyed and embarrassed than anything else by this fact. I would expect the leader of my church to be horrified, desperate to make things right, but the pope seems anxious to put it all behind him... which was the problem in the first place.
After Katrina, one writer accurately pegged why Bush's response bugged him so much. Watching the horrible scenes on TV he was desperate, anxious to do something, anything to help, and he never got that impression from Bush. He wanted to know that his president was on the phone screaming at people. Never mind that it might not have been necessary or prudent, he wanted to know that his leader was just as appalled and concerned as he was and in public anyway, it just wasn't there.
Personally I have no problem believing that kmbboots is Catholic. But I really don't think the pope is, anymore.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
One question: how are other crimes handled by the church? What if priests steal, or rape adults, or kill? Are they shuffled away or given to police?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote: That's just not true. There are many, many people who disavow the noixious claims of the Catholic church. They call themselves something other than Catholic.
I've been frankly baffled by kmbboots's religious ideas before too, but this particular line seems pretty silly to me. Disavowing bad things the Catholic Church has done promptly makes one cease to be a Catholic?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
No; saying "That is not Catholicism" of anything that one happens to disagree with, in defiance of the church's hierarchy redefines Catholicism to the point where it is useless as a definition. If we're going to use the word at all, it should have some meaning. If it has meaning, then kmb is not a Catholic any more than I am; if it is just a meaningless noise, then why bother? I assume kmb would agree that the Irish terrorists who blow people up in the name of 'Catholicism' are not actually Catholic; but if the only criterion is to be self-identification as such, then how can you exclude them? I might as well claim to be Catholic on the grounds that I don't believe in God and eat meat on Fridays!
quote:St. Paul was still Catholic when he disagreed with St. Peter
No he wasn't; there was no Catholic church at the time, so neither of them were Catholic. They were Jewish heretics.
quote:Hildegard of Bingham was still Catholic when she defied the canons.
Dude, she disagreed with her boss about where to place a monastery. Let's see her argue a point of doctrine.
quote: Yves Congar was still Catholic when he argued for ecumenicism.
He suggested that the Protestants might have some decent points, and was removed from teaching or publishing.
quote:The overwhelming majority of American Catholics who disagree with the official teaching on birth control and divorce, still Catholic.
No they're not. The Church hasn't got around to excomming them yet, presumably on the grounds that they would stop tithing.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Sure the IRA are (mostly) Catholics. DO you think that they are (were, really at this point) bombing anything over Catholicism, you are confused or misinformed about Northern Irish history.
As for my examples, at the time those things were points of doctrine. Serious doctrine. Things change, which is kind of my point.
You know that "no true Scotsman" thing is a multi-edged sword.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Things change, which is kind of my point.
Can I claim something like "Muhammad was the one true prophet of God" and still assert credibly that I am still a Catholic just because I desire to consider myself a Catholic? Can I excuse this by saying that doctrine will or may change to fit my view in the future?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
No. But then that's not really a credible example, since that is one of the fundamental beliefs of a completely different religion. Of course you're aware of that and it's just a rhetorical tactic, but it's still not valid.
'The Pope is wrong about sexuality' would be somewhere on a continuum away from...shall we say completely orthodox Catholicism? But 'Muhammed is the one true prophet of God' must surely be as far along that continuum as it's possible to get.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
First, are you already Catholic? Baptized, confirmed all that? If yes, I would say that you were Catholic, but quite possibly heretical. If not, and you were a candidate or catechumen, I would suggest that you talk it over with a priest and/or your sponsor.
Also, what Rakeesh wrote. I am not sure if saying that Mohommed was a true prophet would be heretical as it isn't something I have delved into very deeply. This is, as best as I can come up with, "official doctrine" on Muslims.
quote: The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.
Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.
Does that help?
(From NOSTRA AETATE)
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote: That's just not true. There are many, many people who disavow the noixious claims of the Catholic church. They call themselves something other than Catholic.
I've been frankly baffled by kmbboots's religious ideas before too, but this particular line seems pretty silly to me. Disavowing bad things the Catholic Church has done promptly makes one cease to be a Catholic?
It's not about disavoing actions, it's about rejecting fundamental claims.
Here's some:
"the task of authentically interpreting the Word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church...It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others".
"The lay apostolate, individual or collective, must be set in its true place within the apostolate of the whole Church. Union with those whom the Holy Spirit has appointed to rule the Church of God (cf. Acts 20:28) is an essential element of the Christian apostolate."
"As for works and institutions of the temporal order, the duty of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is the teaching and authentic interpretation of the moral principles to be followed in this domain."
That's pretty explicit. This not a "You are free to believe whatever you want" document.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Nor is it a "the Pope is always right" document." The teaching authority of the Church is not just the Pope and, in fact, requires that teaching be "received" by the whole Church.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: No. But then that's not really a credible example, since that is one of the fundamental beliefs of a completely different religion. Of course you're aware of that and it's just a rhetorical tactic, but it's still not valid.
'The Pope is wrong about sexuality' would be somewhere on a continuum away from...shall we say completely orthodox Catholicism? But 'Muhammed is the one true prophet of God' must surely be as far along that continuum as it's possible to get.
The thing is, there's no such thing as orthodox Roman Catholicism. (Disregard the American political movement.) If you're Roman Catholic, you do as a Roman Catholic does. If you don't, you're not Roman Catholic.
The Church doesn't do this fuzzy-wuzzy whatever-works Protestant nonsense. It's a clear identity with clear rules of behavior. Some orders are more conservative than others, but nobody has the power or authority to challenge Mother Church.
Boots is a really nice person, but she's a Protestant who thinks she's Catholic. Maybe she really likes her religious community; maybe she really likes that cool incense thing; maybe she thinks because her local community doesn't contradict her beliefs, Catholicism's cool with fuzzy-wuzzy-disregard-the-Vatican theology. But she's just not Catholic.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: So, yes, I am responsible for what my Church does and responsible for trying to make it better. So go ahead and "yell" at me. Yelling is okay.
By the way, acting like a martyr is kind of obnoxious. Nobody's yelling at you. Nobody's even been rude to you, as far as I've noticed. I think you're a nice person, but your odd condescension detracts from otherwise good impressions.
You're severely incorrect about Catholic theology, and (presumably out of love for your local community) you insist that the Church's child-rape circle has "plenty that we need to fix - I would say the same for just about any organization." I think you're a nice person. You just don't seem to have applied critical thought to any aspect of your religion.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Lalo, I don't knwo what your experience with Catholicism is but it is significantly different from my experience and the experience of almost every Catholic I know. In my parish and others, priests and nuns and laity. I gave examples of good Catholics - ones who became saints even - and who challenged the Vatican. At one time, for another example, the Vatican insisted that women religious be cloistered. Mary Ward challenged that, was imprisoned as a heretic and is now on the path to sainthood. And women are no longer necessarily cloistered.
ETA: Lalo, I apologize if I gave the impression that I think that people are "yelling" at me. I was responding to someone else who suggested that folks shouldn't vent their anger at me.
If you think that I take the child abuse scandal lightly, you have not really read what I have written. And whether you approve of my conclusions or not, I have spent decades contemplating the question of authority in the Catholic Church before a year of formal instruction before converting. And my "local community" is one of the oldest and most respected in my (large) city. I trust the judgment of the priests there and other priests I know.
ETA again: I am sorry that your experience with the Church was so bad.
[ March 30, 2010, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
To return to the subject at hand, the Church won't change; because it can't change. Much like Boots, if they revise Catholicism to make more sense, they wouldn't be Catholic anymore.
Matt Taibbi lays it out in his usual way:
quote:Somewhere underneath all of this there is a root story that has to do with celibacy. The celibate status of its priests is basically the Catholic church’s last market advantage in the Christian religion racket, but human beings are not designed to be celibate and so problems naturally arise among the population of priests forced to live that terrible lifestyle. Just as it refuses to change its insane and criminal stance on birth control and condoms, the church refuses to change its horrifically cruel policy about priestly celibacy. That’s because it quite correctly perceives that should it begin to dispense with the irrational precepts of its belief system, it would lose its appeal as an ancient purveyor of magical-mystery bullshit and become just a bigger, better-financed, and infinitely more depressing version of a Tony Robbins self-help program.
Therefore it must cling to its miserable celibacy in order to keep its sordid business scheme going; and if clinging to its miserable celibacy means having to look the other way while children are serially molested by its sexually stunted and tortured employees, well, so be it.
If you look at it that way, the church’s institutional behavior is far worse than is commonly believed. It’s not just a matter of an intractable bureaucracy responding too slowly or too insensitively to some scattered accidents of fate. This is more like the situation of a car company that continues selling a cheap but faulty brake system because it has calculated that it stands to make more money selling the cars than it does to lose in lawsuits. The only difference is, a car company can fix the brakes if it wants to. What the Catholic church is selling is by definition faulty. It can’t change, or it will be out of business. So even if not changing means kids will be continue to be molested, it doesn’t change.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: No. But then that's not really a credible example, since that is one of the fundamental beliefs of a completely different religion. Of course you're aware of that and it's just a rhetorical tactic, but it's still not valid.
'The Pope is wrong about sexuality' would be somewhere on a continuum away from...shall we say completely orthodox Catholicism? But 'Muhammed is the one true prophet of God' must surely be as far along that continuum as it's possible to get.
Exactly. And then if one can agree that 'no, at that point you've gone too far and you can't claim to be a Catholic' then that means that there exists somewhere along that continuum a point at which you cannot claim to be a Catholic.
Otherwise, I can assume catholicism is a tautology club. 'I am a catholic because I am a catholic.' etc.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Priests have not always been celibate. The Church has changed to require celibacy, therefore it clearly can change. It has changed on many issues.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: At one time, for another example, the Vatican insisted that women religious be cloistered. Mary Ward challenged that, was imprisoned as a heretic and is now on the path to sainthood. And women are no longer necessarily cloistered.
Again, this doesn't help you. No one is asserting that the church is any good at figuring out anything (like whether a particular women is a vile heretic or a saint), or that it doesn't contradict itself all over the place.
But Roman Catholicism still has its doctrine decided by the hierarchy. The article doesn't read "The pope's veto was overridden by the signatures of 50,000 English priets, represetning their 50,000 church communities". It reads "The pope decided X is true. Case closed".
quote:If you think that I take the child abuse scandal lightly, you have not really read what I have written.
No one is claiming that. What we are claiming is that you choose to belong to a church that cares less about child abuse that it does about protecting its image. And if you think that this attitude is confined to the guys with funny hats, you are seriously wrong. Those parishoners who gave the bishop of New York a standing ovation for claimng that the Pope was the true victim in all this are not less Catholic than you are.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lalo: You just don't seem to have applied critical thought to any aspect of your religion.
Well duh. Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Are you saying that the Church cannot change or that it can? I assert (and have demonstrated) that it can and does and that change most often happens from "the bottom up".
ETA: I also belong to a country that invades other countries for no good reason and drops bombs on children. I do what I can to make it better.
Look, other people have written on this far better than I can. I would suggest, Garry Wills, Jack Shea, James Carroll, Robert McClory for a start.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Lalo, I don't knwo what your experience with Catholicism is but it is significantly different from my experience and the experience of almost every Catholic I know. In my parish and others, priests and nuns and laity. I gave examples of good Catholics - ones who became saints even - and who challenged the Vatican. At one time, for another example, the Vatican insisted that women religious be cloistered. Mary Ward challenged that, was imprisoned as a heretic and is now on the path to sainthood. And women are no longer necessarily cloistered.
ETA: Lalo, I apologize if I gave the impression that I think that people are "yelling" at me. I was responding to someone else who suggested that folks shouldn't vent their anger at me.
If you think that I take the child abuse scandal lightly, you have not really read what I have written. And whether you approve of my conclusions or not, I have spent decades contemplating the question of authority in the Catholic Church before a year of formal instruction before converting. And my "local community" is one of the oldest and most respected in my (large) city. I trust the judgment of the priests there and other priests I know.
ETA again: I am sorry that your experience with the Church was so bad.
Boots, here's a collection of quotes from you on page two alone.
quote: Our doctrine is not all bishops and Popes.
I would say to both of you that that is not, by a long shot, the whole of the Church. Yes, no question, there is plenty that we need to fix - I would say the same for just about any organization - but that is not all we are.
It won't be easy, but there are good people - like Fr. Doyle who are working tirelessly for this. He is as much the Church as any of the bishops.
The Pope isn't the Church. The Vatican isn't the Church. The Bishops are not the Church. Corruption is part of power
I'll correct that by saying that, while the Pope et al are certainly part of the Church, they are not more the Church than the rest of us.
Which religious wars? And, no, the Pope isn't the highest authority or even the head of the Church.
I am reasonably confident that Jesus is the head of the Church.
yes, torture and burning alive was bad. Still is. It was hardly the unique province of the Catholic Church, however, nor was it a uniquely religious punishment.
[completely unintentionally ironic quote of 1 Corinthians 12]
There is more to the difference between Catholic and Protestant than just the Pope.
I am not sure if saying that Mohommed was a true prophet would be heretical as it isn't something I have delved into very deeply.
The teaching authority of the Church is not just the Pope and, in fact, requires that teaching be "received" by the whole Church.
For the record, there's no need to apologize for "your experience with the Church was so bad," because I didn't have a bad experience with the Church. Growing up Catholic was awesome, and so was every Catholic I ever knew. I'm an atheist from reason, not anger.
However, I'm not blind to the incredible crimes of the Church, and I'm not willing to write off a child-molestation ring as fixer-upper issues every organization has. And to cheerfully rewrite Catholic theology so the Pope is no more important than you are... Boots, I'm sorry, but I think you're in denial. It's great that you like your Catholic community, but please don't conflate your opinions with Catholic theology.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Then I apologize for my misunderstanding. Again, I would suggest reading Garry Wills or James Carroll. They are both very aware of the various crimes of the Catholic Church (even if you don't think that I am) and explain better than I why they are still Catholic.
My quotation of 1Corinthians was not ironic - we just interpret it differently. I interpret it in the light of Matthew who writes of Christ who overturns the obvious order.
Surely, you can't claim that Thomas Doyle is blind to the crimes of the Church. He has quite literally devoted his life to being an advocate for victims of abuse by priests. If he can still consider himself Catholic, I certainly can.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Exactly. And then if one can agree that 'no, at that point you've gone too far and you can't claim to be a Catholic' then that means that there exists somewhere along that continuum a point at which you cannot claim to be a Catholic.
Certainly. And you're saying that kmbboots has crossed that point...evidence for which you point out that claiming Muhammed is the true prophet of God is not a Catholic thing to say.
Hardly compelling, Samprimary.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:By the way, acting like a martyr is kind of obnoxious. Nobody's yelling at you. Nobody's even been rude to you, as far as I've noticed. I think you're a nice person, but your odd condescension detracts from otherwise good impressions.
Where I come from, labeling someone's religion stupid, evil, criminal, insane, and someone personally deluded repeatedly...well, that's at least a little rude.
One might even consider it condescending.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Here is an older article, but it still pertains to the issue at hand. If nothing else, it shows I am not alone.
KoM, When - if - the Pope decides to excommunicate most American Catholics, that will be an interesting day.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: ... Why would you be angry at these people?
Depends on the person. Depends on the issue. I think you're going to have to be a lot more specific if you want anything better.
I don't know that I've seen you displaying anger at people. I was talking more about posters like swbarnes, who seem constantly angry at every religious individual he interacts with.
From my perspective, the thing that puzzles me about this anger is a pretty fundamental thing, so it doesn't really matter to me whether we're talking about boots or like Ron Lambert. So, let's say Ron Lambert. I don't get why the evangelical atheists get angry at Ron Lambert.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I get angry (well, annoyed) at Ron Lambert.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: At one time, for another example, the Vatican insisted that women religious be cloistered. Mary Ward challenged that, was imprisoned as a heretic and is now on the path to sainthood.
And the disconnect is in how you seem to have NO idea how much "was imprisoned as a heretic and is now on the path to sainthood" makes the Church look like a collection of crazies.
Seriously, if the Pope, who is supposed to have some special connection with God, hasn't even got the foresight and/or Godlike wisdom keep a future saint out of prison...What is the point of having that Pope? Or more accurately, what is the point of paying him? LOL
This reminds me of how OSC had no idea how much it damaged the credibility of the LDS church when he said that the liberal Mormon professors at BYU have about as much influence over Mormon doctrine as the average 9-year-old Tagalog-speaking new convert.
The view from INside must sure be different than the one from outside, in both cases, you know?
To all Mormons--if you don't know why that OSC statement damaged the credibility of the LDS church, please don't tell me that it doesn't. It does. When some of the best-educated and most intelligent members of a church are ones that have the least power and influence...that says nothing wonderful about the church, ya know?
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:To all Mormons--if you don't know why that OSC statement damaged the credibility of the LDS church, please don't tell me that it doesn't. It does. When some of the best-educated and most intelligent members of a church are ones that have the least power and influence...that says nothing wonderful about the church, ya know?
Do you equate "liberal" and "professor" with most intelligent and best-educated? Even if you do, you'd have to further posit that intelligence and education are the key qualifications for authority in the church. I get what you're saying, but this kind of criticism is entirely irrelevant* from a faithful member point of view, because none of your premises are held applicable. (I myself make criticisms that are irrelevant and off the mark as far as believers are concerned, but I don't expect them to agree!)
*It's also irrelevant to Mormons whether non members think their church is made to look credible to outsiders by any random member, such as OSC.
Posted by Jenos (Member # 12168) on :
His point is not about the validity of these people as an authority of the church; rather, by saying that they are equally valid in determining doctrine as someone uneducated it undermines the credibility of the church, as credibility is dependent on how outsiders view the church.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:His point is not about the validity of these people as an authority of the church; rather, by saying that they are equally valid in determining doctrine as someone uneducated it undermines the credibility of the church, as credibility is dependent on how outsiders view the church.
Okay, but!
The church is not at all credible to anyone who evaluates it on terms that are not set by the religion itself. They claim their authority is delegated from God. If you don't accept that, the entire organization is bankrupt of credibility.
Given that and the way the hierarchy divides and further delegates that authority, it's completely natural that BYU professors have essentially zero influence on the doctrine.
I'm saying the standard by which this fact is assumed to have some bearing on the credibility of the organization is pretty much useless, both inside and outside. Outside, either you believe the foundational truth claims or you don't, and if you don't, who cares? Inside, you believe them, and the fact is inevitable.
Posted by Jenos (Member # 12168) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Okay, but!
The church is not at all credible to anyone who evaluates it on terms that are not set by the religion itself. They claim their authority is delegated from God. If you don't accept that, the entire organization is bankrupt of credibility.
Given that and the way the hierarchy divides and further delegates that authority, it's completely natural that BYU professors have essentially zero influence on the doctrine.
I'm saying the standard by which this fact is assumed to have some bearing on the credibility of the organization is pretty much useless, both inside and outside. Outside, either you believe the foundational truth claims or you don't, and if you don't, who cares? Inside, you believe them, and the fact is inevitable.
No, the church should not be at all credible to those who evaluate it on terms not set by the religion. Regardless of what should or shouldn't be the case, the claim that it actually does hurt the credibility is a viable one, because people constantly do base credibility on factors that are not theology related. Just because it should or shouldn't be this way has no bearing on this issue.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Viable how? steven claimed OSC was so obtuse that he had no idea how much it damaged the church's credibility that he was willing to say (colorfully stated fact about how the hierarchy works).
I'm absolutely sure that OSC realizes that if people are judging the church's credibility on terms including "do the opinions of their most highly educated and intelligent members [or a demographic assumed to have large overlap with that set] influence the church doctrine?" then they will not find the church to be credible.
So, whether the criticism is viable depends on for what purpose. Viable for influencing how the church tailors its efforts to expand its membership? I don't think so. The church requires that prospective members evaluate the church on its own terms.
Viable for helping a person determine if they want to be a member? Maybe - but there are more fundamental problems that pretty much obviate it. If, as you say, people are using this standard to judge the credibility of the church, there's no real resolution possible that doesn't undermine the foundations of the institution.
Either way, I'm mostly ribbing steven for raising the issue and asking church members to agree, since there's no way they would even grant the premises.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum:
Either way, I'm mostly ribbing steven for raising the issue and asking church members to agree, since there's no way they would even grant the premises.
It's a proselytizing religion. If it wants converts, it pretty much has to at least keep half an eye, if not more, on its own credibility-as-viewed-from-outside-the-religion.
My criticism is anything but irrelevant and off the mark. Most new Mormons are created by being born to current church members, but, the way the church treats and talks about missionary work, it's clear that missionary work is pretty important to at least some in the LDS church.
Also, I would NOT entirely say that accepting the truth of the Book of Mormon is the same as accepting the awesomeness of the LDS hierarchy. There are plenty of jack Mormons and RLDS/Community of Christ people around. I'm not either of those, but I know plenty. My best friend since childhood was raised in the RLDS church.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: At one time, for another example, the Vatican insisted that women religious be cloistered. Mary Ward challenged that, was imprisoned as a heretic and is now on the path to sainthood.
And the disconnect is in how you seem to have NO idea how much "was imprisoned as a heretic and is now on the path to sainthood" makes the Church look like a collection of crazies.
Seriously, if the Pope, who is supposed to have some special connection with God, hasn't even got the foresight and/or Godlike wisdom keep a future saint out of prison...What is the point of having that Pope? Or more accurately, what is the point of paying him? LOL
How is learning and changing for the better crazy? Would it be less crazy to stay wrong? During the time that Mary Ward lived, most people thought that women had no or little place in public life. Now that has changed.
Steven, do you think that the Pope has magical powers? Or is other than human? Popes make mistakes. The doctrine of infallibility does not mean that the Pope is always right. In fact, infallibility has only been invoked twice and not about anything particularly controversial (Mary stuff). This is a common misunderstanding and seems like maybe that is what you were thinking. We don't pay Popes because we think that they never make mistakes. Clearly, throughout the history of the Church, Popes have made mistakes.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
How is learning and changing for the better crazy? Would it be less crazy to stay wrong? During the time that Mary Ward lived, most people thought that women had no or little place in public life. Now that has changed.
Steven, do you think that the Pope has magical powers? Or is other than human? Popes make mistakes. The doctrine of infallibility does not mean that the Pope is always right. In fact, infallibility has only been invoked twice and not about anything particularly controversial (Mary stuff). This is a common misunderstanding and seems like maybe that is what you were thinking. We don't pay Popes because we think that they never make mistakes. Clearly, throughout the history of the Church, Popes have made mistakes.
Great, but if you're paying the man for his special connection with teh Gawd, shouldn't he manage to avoid jailing future saints?
And it ain't like the man is gettin' paid slave wages. I've seen pictures of Vatican City. That is one heck of a house. It makes the White House look plebian.
All I'm sayin' is, whatever happened to merit-based pay? LOL
ba-dum tsssh.
OK, enough comedy. I know that being the Pope is not an easy job these days. Running an organization of that size is stressful, no doubt. However, let's be honest about what he is, which is mainly just a CEO. Granted, it's not like you, of all Catholics, are in danger of deifying the Pope. Quite the contrary. However...
Merit-based pay. Give it some thought.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I would not have a problem with that. Of course, it ain't so much the salary as the perks.
If it wasn't clear, Mary Ward is not yet a saint and she lived 400 years ago so it wasn't exactly a quicky flip flop by a single Pope.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I don't know that I've seen you displaying anger at people.
Probably have, perhaps less so recently.
This might be part of the difficulty in an external definition like evangelical atheist (as opposed to one that people self-identify as). For most part, I agree with the writings of Dawkins, some Dennett, some Hitchens, and the usual suspects that most people who use the phrase "evangelical atheist" would bring up.
Are you implying that anger is required definitionally to qualify for the group? I dunno.
quote: So, let's say Ron Lambert. I don't get why the evangelical atheists get angry at Ron Lambert.
Well, I can put fairly made-up numbers here. For my part, my annoyance with him would be: * 30% "Dawkins"-like offence (retaliation as a scientist against assertions that fly in the face of reality) * 20% Canadian antipathy toward an aggressively non-international American POV * 30% Reflexive response against the social and legal influence that people like him have * 20% Asian antipathy toward Christianity and fundamentalism
But obviously, you're going to find a totally different mix of reasons for swbarnes (who should lack at least 40% of the reasons and possibly add others). Combined that with the fact that you can't totally eliminate reasons that could also be associated with religious persons such as kmbboots.
I think that demonstrates the difficulty in finding "the answer" and one unifying explanation for the anger that you wish to explain.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
It occurs to me that maybe my sense of outrage and anger and horror about the child molestation and cover up of that crime may not have been clear enough. I think that this is because the subject is not a new one for me. I have been aware and angry about this for probably twenty years. While the outrage is there, it is not "fresh" outrage. Does that make sense?
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: It occurs to me that maybe my sense of outrage and anger and horror about the child molestation and cover up of that crime may not have been clear enough. I think that this is because the subject is not a new one for me. I have been aware and angry about this for probably twenty years. While the outrage is there, it is not "fresh" outrage. Does that make sense?
Which raises the question: if you've known, why have you been supporting these pedophiles for twenty years?
I'm not questioning your outrage over child molestation, but your actions belie your anger. What's your threat to the Church? "Stop molesting kids, or I'll... continue being a Catholic and supporting you financially"? Have you done anything of note about the Church's corruption, child abuse, or stunningly backwards positions on homosexuality and birth control? Besides your rewriting of Catholic theology to make you less culpable for their crimes?
Again, I think you're a very nice person. But the fact that you've been so quiescent in the face of these remarkable crimes is why the Church will never, ever have to change. No, writing a few essays or liking other people who write essays is not changing anything. Walking away from the Church is a change. Even better, organizing other people to walk away from the Church might change something.
But so long as you cheerfully insist that child-rape is just one of many problems that any other organization has, and that it won't change your mind on remaining Catholic and supporting the Church, they don't need to listen to you at all.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:By the way, acting like a martyr is kind of obnoxious. Nobody's yelling at you. Nobody's even been rude to you, as far as I've noticed. I think you're a nice person, but your odd condescension detracts from otherwise good impressions.
Where I come from, labeling someone's religion stupid, evil, criminal, insane, and someone personally deluded repeatedly...well, that's at least a little rude.
One might even consider it condescending.
Right, because everyone's said she's stupid and insane.
It's a comfort that you haven't changed over the years, Jeff.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I am not sure that what you mean by quiescences is what I mean by quiescence.
I don't think that walking away is a good way to effect change. Anymore than moving to Canada would change US policy. If it were, the thousands who have abandoned the Church would have made that change. If I leave, they really don't have to listen to me.
You don't know anything about the ways I support the Church. Organizing people to think differently about the Church is, I think, a better way to effect change. You may disagree about my methods, but not my motivation.
Child molestation is terrible. It is not the whole of Catholicism.
And where have I been "cheerful" about child rape? You are projecting onto me a lot that isn't there.
Posted by michaele8 (Member # 6608) on :
Easy way to reduce the problem -- allow priests to get married again.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Easier way to reduce the problem: remove tenure for priests. If you break the law, determined by a fair due process, then you are no longer a priest.
Even better way fundamentally reduce this problem and many others: eliminate paid clergy on the local level. The Catholic church is really its membership? Then its membership shall run it.
Instead of a job for life with an artificial lifestyle and a vested interest in protecting their jobs, let the leadership be made up for faithful Catholics who are living the life they people they preach to are living.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I am not sure that what you mean by quiescences is what I mean by quiescence.
I don't think that walking away is a good way to effect change.
Right. The Montgomory bus boycott was such a civil rights failure. Obviously the better strategy would have been for the black bus riders to keep paying the bus company that was discriminating against them same as always.
quote:Anymore than moving to Canada would change US policy.
For the umteenth time, there is a mechanism for citizens to influence national policies. We have a health insurence bill because voters voted in men and women who would write and pass it. What is the mechanism by which laity can change church policy? Can you show any examples of it actually working? And no, linking to another article where the Pope single-handedly overturns a 300-year precedent doesn't count.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I think that both of those suggestions would be enormous changes to Catholicism. The first is, I hope, a possible change. Celibacy has not always been required and even today some priests are married.
The second would be a fundamental change to Catholicism both theologically and practically. Being a priest is a 24/7 vocation and requires years of education and training. I would also balk at "artificial". For some, celibacy is a profound gift.
However, I do think that a lessening of the notion that priests are separate and more special or "magical" and above our ability to question would be an excellent and necessary thing.
swbarnes, not taking the bus is different from changing what one believes. And, "for the umteenth time" how many more examples of how people have changed the Church do you need?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't think that walking away is a good way to effect change. Anymore than moving to Canada would change US policy.
I have a different viewpoint of course
Both in general, I think moving to Canada is a splendid idea. And in specific, the Loyalists moving to Canada helped prevent the US from expanding into Canadian territory and helped create a Canada that has closer ties to England and the rest of the Commonwealth which still persist today. Their actions were highly preferable to staying behind, paying taxes, and trying to influence the US from within.
Or in another example, I believe that the Chinese diaspora into Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Americas helped in creating societies that were later able to act both as inspiration and as direct providers of capital and aid to the mainland later during the market reforms. This was also preferable to fighting it out on the mainland.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Their actions had a good effect on Canada. Which is great, but not what I was looking for, nor, I think, what swbarnes thinks would happen. He seems to be confusing the Catholic Church with Walmart.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Not just Canada, I think they a good effect on the US too. Specifically, restricting it in size and influence which I do think swbarnes wouldn't be adverse to or Lalo here:
quote:Walking away from the Church is a change. Even better, organizing other people to walk away from the Church might change something.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: swbarnes, not taking the bus is different from changing what one believes.
You claimed that not participating wouldn't work. I demonstrated a case where it did.
But as you have explictly claimed that people can choose what to believe, I don't see why changing what one believes is so hard.
Just choose to believe good stuff. Why can't you choose to believe that since the Catholic church is hopelessly flawed (not to mention flat wrong about things like contraception and civil gay marriage), you can shake the dust from your sandals, and work out accurate beliefs about God without its help?
quote:"for the umteenth time" how many more examples of how people have changed the Church do you need?
Just one example of the laity doing that. How many times do I have to type "laity" before you will accept the evidence of your eyes?
For instance, start naming laity who were in charge of committees drafting Vatican II documents. That's be a nice example.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
Hmm. Look, maybe it's better phrased this way. What would it take for you to reconsider Catholicism? I have trouble imagining anything more egregious than raping children and protecting other child rapists.
Seriously, at what point would doubt enter your mind?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
And you still seem to think of faith as a consumer activity. Try thinking of it more as a belief system, a community, a family all wrapped up in one. And, yes, a flawed family, but still more good than bad and the bad can be fixed.
Because 6% of priests are sick, I should abandon all of them? I should renounce my own vows? You are acting like child-rape is a part of doctrine. I would rather work to hold priests and bishops accountable - as Catholics all over the world are beginning to do.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Lalo,
quote:The Church is dying, and good riddance.
Not really. If they excommunicated every priest who molested kids (or enabled pedophiles), they'd have nobody left.
Maybe it'll even lead to a revocation of their idiotic stances on birth control and abortion.
...which I feel is the next best alternative to the Church becoming irrelevant to the modern world.
The Church is unfixably corrupt, and dreams that it'll reform itself are naive. For god's sake, look at Benedict's railings against liberals to get an idea of his desire for reform. The only solution I see is European -- that someday soon, the world will abandon religion and this corrupt institution will fade into irrelevance.
Blind loyalty like yours...
And, heck, that's just halfway through the second page, Eddie. These are all excellent examples of your being rude to her, at least by the standards most people operate. Don't believe me? Pick a person at random, and examine one of their most important personal beliefs. Doesn't even have to be religion. Tell them explicitly how stupid that belief is, how corrupt, and how much better the world would be if that belief system were eradicated right this very second.
You - of all people - were criticizing kmbboots for being condescending and how that detracted from her other good qualities. Your source for this criticism was that she was 'playing a martyr', and no one was yelling at her or even being rude to her. You! Of all people saying that, given the things you've said in only a part of the entire discussion.
You've got me on one thing though, at least. You never explicitly stated stupid and insane. But I wonder, if you asked around, how many people do you think would answer 'no' if you asked if they had that impression of your opinion of her beliefs? Show of hands?
The rest, though? You're still not a person one can have a civil conversation with about religion, Eddie. I think perhaps you learned at least one wrong lesson from the mentor you mentioned, the one who responded to your baiting with patient kindness. Because in all your time here, 'baiting' is a very apt characterization of your interactions with all sorts of religious people on all sorts of topics.
Now, I can't stop you from saying whatever you like to kmbboots. I wouldn't if I could. I was curious, though, to see if maybe you were someone who would have a civil conversation on the matter, because I used to enjoy talking with you. You're clearly not. Kmbboots has the patience to talk with you in spite of that, and more power to her. I'm not. Maybe we can talk sports some time, should the topic come up.
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Because 6% of priests are sick, I should abandon all of them?
No.
Because 6% are sick and the other 94% seem to be working to protect them from prosecution and putting other children in danger.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: And you still seem to think of faith as a consumer activity. Try thinking of it more as a belief system, a community, a family all wrapped up in one. And, yes, a flawed family, but still more good than bad and the bad can be fixed.
Because 6% of priests are sick, I should abandon all of them? I should renounce my own vows? You are acting like child-rape is a part of doctrine. I would rather work to hold priests and bishops accountable - as Catholics all over the world are beginning to do.
Okay, the Church is your family. So you just found out Uncle Jeff has been raping your son and protecting other rapist uncles from civil prosecution. Your solution to this is to write essays expressing your displeasure, but continue weekly visits to Uncle Jeff's house and paying him money for the hospitality?
But even though Uncle Jeff is a leech and a rapist, you refuse to consider kicking him out of the family. Instead, you'd rather believe that he's really not that important in your family. And rather then take your beloved family members away from Jeff's house to Uncle Richard's house, so Jeff loses your money to fund his molester defense account, you insist that Uncle Richard is completely incompatible with your family -- even though your beliefs are basically an exact fit with Uncle Richard's.
It's an imperfect analogy, but you get the idea. You ARE a Protestant, theologically speaking. You think you have powers in the Catholic Church that you, well, don't. You don't share beliefs OR reality with the Church, and you need to come to terms with that.
And I think you completely missed swbarnes' point -- you CAN'T hold Uncle Jeff accountable. You can't fix the bad things. Like he said, the Church isn't a democracy. You have no voice and no power but to walk away.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Lalo, your analogy is supposed to equate "church" with "family" but you end up equating "bad Uncle" with "church."
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: The rest, though? You're still not a person one can have a civil conversation with about religion, Eddie.
Jeff, your debate skills are as sharp as ever. If you're not mincing semantics, you'll complain about offense. Either way, you seem to be incapable of simply tackling an issue directly.
I don't think I've been rude, unless criticism of a Church that commits and enables rape is somehow offensive to you. I think Boots is rather severely wrong on both theological and practical matters, and I've put it to her plainly. But then, she seems much more sensible and much less delicate than you.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: And you still seem to think of faith as a consumer activity. Try thinking of it more as a belief system, a community, a family all wrapped up in one.
Regardless, remember that the Pope recently standardized the rules and reduced the barrier for conservative Anglicans to convert en masse to Catholicism. It stands to reason that it should be a fairly equivalent process to invert the process, allowing for liberal Catholics to convert en masse to Anglicanism in a sort of faith-swap.
We can debate whether X number of priests are working for or against change, but it seems fairly obvious that a majority of the hierarchy from the bishops to the Vatican and the Pope are fighting reform tooth and nail. Why not convert and jettison at least that?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Javert:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Because 6% of priests are sick, I should abandon all of them?
No.
Because 6% are sick and the other 94% seem to be working to protect them from prosecution and putting other children in danger.
That is not at all true.
And scifibum's assessment of the Uncle analogy is correct.
Mucus, the Anglican Church does look tempting from time to time. Almost. Not quite the same thing. It is probably more likely that the American (and Canadian and some of Western Europe) would split. Dunno. It is an interesting time. This Pope and the last Pope have tried to "push back" on a lot of Vatican II. I hope we can swing the pendulum back the other way, but we will see.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Lalo, your analogy is supposed to equate "church" with "family" but you end up equating "bad Uncle" with "church."
I think the analogy would go church : family :: priest : uncle. Did I mess that up?
In any case, it's an imperfect analogy. Families don't stay together because of belief systems, nor are they ruled from afar by a small, undemocratic circle of revered uncles who tell the rest of the family what to believe.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
" think the analogy would go church : family :: priest : uncle. Did I mess that up?"
No, that's fine. But your argument was more like church: family :: uncle : uncle.
To be more specific, she's not ignoring the sins of the sick uncle and being friendly to him like there's nothing wrong, the way you said she was:
quote:So you just found out Uncle Jeff has been raping your son and protecting other rapist uncles from civil prosecution. Your solution to this is to write essays expressing your displeasure, but continue weekly visits to Uncle Jeff's house and paying him money for the hospitality?
It's a lot more like she's calling for the uncle to be removed from a position where he can hurt anyone, asking the family elders to change how they deal with problems, and (I'm guessing) trying to help the family members within her reach to heal from their hurts and to be more vigilant for bad uncles.
Whether this is effective is one question, but whatever the answer, your portrayal is unfair and inaccurate.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
All analogies are imperfect, but in yours I kept going to the same priest. I would say that I go visit a different uncle and keep bugging Grandpa to make that, if any of the cousins act up, they get sent to jail. We already made Grandpa send Uncle Jeff to jail and are shouting at him for not doing it 20 years ago.
You may not have noticed but the Vatican has changed or at least is in the process of changing the policy on this. Change, due to pressure from good priests and from the laity.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: And you still seem to think of faith as a consumer activity.
"I get to choose. When there is no compelling, certain, irrefutable evidence to the contrary - and there can be none either way for the existence of God as I define God - I get to choose. Yay! I choose good stuff.
Not so yay for the people who choose less good stuff. I don't understand those people. Nor do I understand the people who don't know that they choose. Of course we do."
Emphasis mine.
That's not religous belief as consumer activity? Indeed, plenty of theists on these boards have defended their religous beliefs, not on the grounds that they are accurate, but on the grounds that they make them feel good. Sounds like consumer choice to me.
quote:And, yes, a flawed family, but still more good than bad and the bad can be fixed.
What evidence leads you to believe that things can be fixed? The Bishop of New York was applauded by laity when he said that the Pope had been falsely accused like Jesus. Why would those people fix anything?
Why would the bus companies change their policies if black people were content to keep riding the bus and paying their fares?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Nope. Figuring out what one believes is true is not the same as buying a car.
Those people are only part of the Church.
You have already made that argument. I told you why I disagreed. Move on. Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Mucus, the Anglican Church does look tempting from time to time. Almost. Not quite the same thing. It is probably more likely that the American (and Canadian and some of Western Europe) would split.
I agree that schism is a more likely than mass conversion. I also agree that the churches aren't the same thing, but they are incredibly similar to the extent that the Pope has allowed this mass conversion.
I was also more thinking about you, specifically.
What specific things cause you to be attached to the Catholic church rather rather than the Anglican church and why do you think you would not be allowed to carry those over (if you do indeed think that)?
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Nope. Figuring out what one believes is true is not the same as buying a car.
Those people are only part of the Church.
You have already made that argument. I told you why I disagreed. Move on.
What are you talking about? If you cited what I actually wrote, that would be a lot fairer.
Are you disavowing this argument:
quote:"I get to choose. When there is no compelling, certain, irrefutable evidence to the contrary - and there can be none either way for the existence of God as I define God - I get to choose. Yay! I choose good stuff.
Not so yay for the people who choose less good stuff. I don't understand those people. Nor do I understand the people who don't know that they choose. Of course we do."
I don't see where figuring out what is true fits into that equation. We fallible humans have no methods at all for finding absolutely certain truths. We have good tools of finding false claims, but you have said in no uncertain terms that those tools are inappropriate for religious use. You yourself posted an article about the Papacy being wrong about something for 300 years. What reason do you have to think that you will be better at it than God's vicar on earth?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Mucus, I don't have a link to it, but if your email is available, I will send you a pdf of the forward to Garry Wills's book that explains it perfectly for me.
ETA: You, too, swbarnes, if you are interested.
ETA Again: This might be interesting. I don't agree with him about all of it and I wasn't raised Catholic, but lots of it is true for me. Breaking bread, Sacrament and sacrament, telling the stories, communion.
[ March 31, 2010, 06:40 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't agree with him about all of it and I wasn't raised Catholic, but lots of it is true for me. Breaking bread, Sacrament and sacrament, telling the stories, communion.
Sure, but the guy admits that if he'd been born to Protestant parents, he'd probably be doing the same thing in a Protestant church.
I respect the honesty of that assesment, but it undermines the whole point of his argument. Since his real answer to "Why I'm a Catholic" is "because I was born to it", the rest is all fluff, after-the-fact justification and rationalization.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Kate, I thought you might appreciate this – I came across a quote today from a book by two Catholic theologians suggesting that the image “body of Christ” might not be helpful anymore, since it has become associated in the Christian West with the idea of a “body politic” and the organization of a monarchical state. Better, they suggest, to think of the church as “the pilgrim people of God.”
It was by Karl Rahner and some guy named Ratzinger, maybe you’ve heard of him?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Far be it from me to contradict anyone named Ratzinger, but "pilgrim people of God' misses the point. At least for me. Less "monarchial-ness would be good, though. I can see the "body/head" issue being problematic - if we start thinking of anyone but Christ as the head. "Pilgrim people" may all be going the same way, but they are not one. It allows for some getting there without the others.
When was it written? Before Cardinal Ratzinger was appointed to head the Inquisition?
And I am attached to "Body of Christ". Did I ever tell you my "mass on MLK day after my first peace protest story"?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
The reason I think the system of priests in the Catholic Church needs to fundamentally change is because this is proof that it is fundamentally broken. It is a deep, embedded pattern of corruption that reaches churchwide and affects all levels. I'm not talking about the rapes - although that's horrible on its own - but about the continual and unapologetic cover ups. As an organization, the professional clergy have betrayed their trust and their mission and are placing self preservation above their responsibilities. It is fundamentally corrupt, and that system needs to be dismantled.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ETA Again: This might be interesting. I don't agree with him about all of it and I wasn't raised Catholic, but lots of it is true for me. Breaking bread, Sacrament and sacrament, telling the stories, communion.
This is a very starge use of the word "true", even allowing for the nonsense of "true for me", for which usage a rational state would impose therapy. In what sense is breaking bread or telling stories "true"? (I take it you do not mean that you believe in the factual truth of the stories.)
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
1962.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
As usual, Eddie, you appear to think I have something to prove to you. I don't. Nor does kmbboots, however much that might distress you.
quote:You may not have noticed but the Vatican has changed or at least is in the process of changing the policy on this. Change, due to pressure from good priests and from the laity.
This basically sums it up. This is probably - I'm just taking a wild guess here, as she's said it like a dozen times now - one of the reasons kmbboots considers herself a Catholic. And, y'know, however baffling I personally think some of the conclusions she comes to are, and I really do, she can tell you herself, she's at least as well informed as you are about Catholic theology and society.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by katharina: The reason I think the system of priests in the Catholic Church needs to fundamentally change is because this is proof that it is fundamentally broken. It is a deep, embedded pattern of corruption that reaches churchwide and affects all levels. I'm not talking about the rapes - although that's horrible on its own - but about the continual and unapologetic cover ups. As an organization, the professional clergy have betrayed their trust and their mission and are placing self preservation above their responsibilities. It is fundamentally corrupt, and that system needs to be dismantled.
The LDS church has had their share of lawsuits alleging the same sort of behavior and cover ups. So I'm not sure the cause can be blamed on professional clergy.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Mucus, I don't have a link to it, but if your email is available, I will send you a pdf of the forward to Garry Wills's book that explains it perfectly for me.
Emailed (does this forum use PMs? I could have sworn it did but I can't find it)
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
This forum does not have a PM feature.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Originally posted by dkw: The LDS church has had their share of lawsuits alleging the same sort of behavior and cover ups.
When you say "their share", do you really mean a proportional share in relation to its size, or do you just mean "some"?
--
Also, Katie didn't seem to be blaming it on having professional clergy at all, but to the existing organization.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Also, Katie didn't seem to be blaming it on having professional clergy at all, but to the existing organization.
I disagree. Katie has -- several times in this thread alone -- claimed that a large part of the problem comes from having professional clergy at the local level.
To me, this sounds like, "Your church would have fewer problems if it were more like mine." *shrug*
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Also, Katie didn't seem to be blaming it on having professional clergy at all, but to the existing organization.
I disagree. Katie has -- several times in this thread alone -- claimed that a large part of the problem comes from having professional clergy at the local level.
To me, this sounds like, "Your church would have fewer problems if it were more like mine." *shrug*
It was sounding that way, yes. Politely, but yes. LOL
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Exactly. And then if one can agree that 'no, at that point you've gone too far and you can't claim to be a Catholic' then that means that there exists somewhere along that continuum a point at which you cannot claim to be a Catholic.
Certainly. And you're saying that kmbboots has crossed that point...evidence for which you point out that claiming Muhammed is the true prophet of God is not a Catholic thing to say.
Hardly compelling, Samprimary.
HAVE i actually said that kmbboots has crossed that point?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Fair 'nuff. I haven't followed this entire thread.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Not explicitly, no.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Forget the religious boosterism. Earlier I wondered what could possibly be the motivation for the continued culture of cover up. I have decided that the motivation for it doesn't matter - what matters is whether it is inherent, endemic, and intolerable. From the evidence, it seems that it is. Time to do something about it.
My point is that the professional priests system there is fundamentally corrupt, in that it favors the reputation and lives of the priests over the parishioners. This corruption goes up and down all levels. If the professional priests system can't fulfill their fundamental responsibilities, then they don't get that responsibility.
Once power is used to protect the powerholders instead for its intended purpose - succor and sustain the parishoners - then that power is invalid. Part of the problem is this idea that once a priest, always a priest, and nothing can take that away - no matter how much one abuses the trust placed in him, he will always be super special and more deserving of the care of the church that the people he was entrusted to care for.
That's a messed up system, underpinned fundamentally by this idea of creating super-special people that are above the law and more deserving of concern.
Kate, you say that the Pope isn't the church, and that the priests are not the church. Since it is that system that is abusing the church, you can do away with it and the church will remain.
----
If that's too extreme, how about this: infractions by priests are handled by lay boards. Chruch courts are made up of the laity and are able to defrock priests, remove men from office, and cancel the priesthood of those who have done egregious offense that prove them unworthy to hold it. Priests in general must have a license from the lay boards that is up for renewal every five years or so. Where to report priest misbehavior? Not the people who have a vested interest in protecting the status quo and their jobs, but instead to a system of lay boards, who have the power to remove priests from office.
Think of them as the justice system of the church - not making doctrine, and not carrying out the day-to-day operations, but a desperately needed check against corruption.
[ April 01, 2010, 09:56 AM: Message edited by: katharina ]
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
A priest doesn't always have to be a priest. There are methods to make them not. The problem is those methods aren't used.
While my religions does lay members as leaders and I can understand the reasons, I think that sometimes it is a very harsh and demanding situation. We expect our church leaders to work full time jobs and then come home and do an additional extremely emotional demanding part time job. We are all about family and then we demand local leaders to nearly abandon theirs for several years. We also expect untrained individuals to act as counselors, esp marriage, but in many cases they are the first contact in cases of abuse and other issues. Without training, it is very easy to do a lot more damage than good in some situations.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:A priest doesn't always have to be a priest. There are methods to make them not. The problem is those methods aren't used.
Exactly. Things could be better. However, they are not - they are fundamentally, deeply, endemically, and at all levels broken. The current system, whatever its Platonic ideal may be capable of, is broken in its implementation. If something should work and doesn't, then it doesn't work. If what it is supposed to do truly matters, then get another system.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I think that the priesthood is important. Ordination is a Sacrament and that is important. Sacraments aren't "undone". However, you are absolutely right when you write that, "Once power is used to protect the powerholders instead for its intended purpose - succor and sustain the parishioners - then that power is invalid. Part of the problem is this idea that once a priest, always a priest, and nothing can take that away - no matter how much one abuses the trust placed in him, he will always be super special and more deserving of the care of the church that the people he was entrusted to care for."
The idea that priests are more deserving of care than their parishioners is a big part of the problem. And I would (obviously) have no problem with the Pope being merely the bishop of Rome. That was the case in the early Church.
You will be pleased to know that one of the reforms brought about by the exposure of this crisis is the insistence that laity be involved in investigation of priest misconduct.
ETA: As a reminder, only about 4-6% of priests are offenders. The huge majority are good men who have devoted their lives to their faith.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ... I will send you a pdf of the forward to Garry Wills's book that explains it perfectly for me.
For the record, after reading the forward I found a cleaner version at Google Books. The forward appears to be a part of the free preview here http://twurl.nl/68orn3
[ April 01, 2010, 11:01 AM: Message edited by: Mucus ]
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Thanks! I was just coming here to post it. Was it helpful?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:ETA: As a reminder, only about 4-6% of priests are offenders. The huge majority are good men who have devoted their lives to their faith.
Child abuse is terrible, and, unfortunately, very hard to prevent when someone hasn't acted yet. You can definitely put in precautions (two adults whenever there is a child without a present, like the Boy Scouts do), and those are essential. It is not, however, the child abuse that makes me think the system is broken. As was pointed out elsewhere, that happens, horrifyingly, all over the place.
It is the response. It isn't the original offenses, but the cover ups. The years of cover ups. The deep, willfully blind cover ups that allowed the offense to keep happening, over and over. It is the cover ups that show the system is corrupt. 4-6% of priests sounds like a LOT, but it may or may not be the same as the general population of adults. But the pervasive culture of silence and protection for the offenders - that is the avoidable horror here.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I agree.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Thanks! I was just coming here to post it. Was it helpful?
It was helpful in understanding your POV. I still have objections though. I'm just not terribly motivated to pursue Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I am okay with that.
At least I hope that the two articles have demonstrated that my viewpoint regarding the Pope and his role in Catholicism is a fairly common Catholic viewpoint.
At least in Chicago. Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Yes, but this is hardly news from a Canadian POV. Quebec Catholics have been even more visible in their objection to papal authority in the examples of Prime Ministers Trudeau, Chretien, and Martin.
What I was curious was about the reasoning that you couldn't simply become an Anglican and carry over those elements of ritual that you find compelling from Catholicism (as the inverse of the Pope allowing Anglicans to carry over Anglican rituals).
The line of argument outlined in the forward is that if you assume that the Catholic church is the "true" church, then it is a sin to convert (since it is a form of saying that the church is wrong), a sin to leave the community of Catholics, and that merger with other churches like the Anglican church must be done on a church-level and not on an individual level.
The reason I don't want to pursue, is that this line of reasoning has almost no overlap with arguments based on how effective or how moral the system of the church is. Effectively, the priests, bishops, and pope could be the meanest and most criminal people on Earth, but the Catholic church would still be the "true" church and those arguments would still apply.
(Which is kinda depressing really)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Not explicitly, no.
Right, which is good, since that's not in my intent. I'm picking at the the inclusive self-analysis logic.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
And I was just saying that using a ridiculous outlier example isn't very compelling, that's all. There's plenty of meat on the bone without going crazy.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Hey! Watch the fat jokes!
[ April 01, 2010, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I was making a cannibalism joke.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: What I was curious was about the reasoning that you couldn't simply become an Anglican and carry over those elements of ritual that you find compelling from Catholicism (as the inverse of the Pope allowing Anglicans to carry over Anglican rituals).
Kate already responded to the "consumer commodity" aspect of this line of reasoning, but I also feel compelled to point out that you're suggesting to an American that she join a church headed by the Queen of England. It just struck me as kind of funny. I mean, they kind of had this Revolution thing to get away from the monarchy, you know?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
(to the cannibal joke)
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Meh, I don't think they'll hold that against her.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Hmmm, more progression, Arizona this time
quote:Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that in 1990, members of a church tribunal found that the Rev. Michael Teta in Arizona had molested children and deemed his behaviour — including allegations he abused two boys in a confessional — almost “satanic.”
The tribunal referred his case to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. But it took 12 years from the time Ratzinger assumed control of the case in a signed letter until Teta was formally removed from ministry, a step only the Vatican can take.
As abuse cases with the pontiff’s fingerprints mushroom, Teta’s case and that of another Arizona priest cast further doubt on the church’s insistence that the future pope played no role in shielding pedophiles.
No, when I posted it the article was about the comparison to Jewish oppression, but the AP has updated the story and used the same link. grumble grumble...
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: That was a good article. (I like Archbishop Williams). I think you might have meant to link this one?
Aaaaand there went the last shred of Roman Catholic credibility.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Dude, be serious, Steven: for you that credibility was long gone.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
You're more likely to be molested by a little league coach than a priest.
Muslim's are less than one percent of the US population. There were approximately 90 domestic Islamic terror arrests last year, in the United States. Christians are 80% of the population. The nine crazy christian militia members get more coverage than the 90 domestic Jihadists.
Think about the percentages within the group, not what the media hold's up as examples to defame the group.
[ April 04, 2010, 12:42 AM: Message edited by: malanthrop ]
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: You're more likely to be molested by a little league coach than a priest.
Could I have your source for that, please?
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: There were approximately 90 domestic Islamic terror arrests last year, in the United States.
Remember boys and girls: if you're arrested, you're guilty.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I do wonder, though, Javert...would you be so quick to remember that truth if a Catholic priest were arrested for child molestation?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
It's Javert. He means it when he says you're guilty.
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I do wonder, though, Javert...would you be so quick to remember that truth if a Catholic priest were arrested for child molestation?
Certainly. Why wouldn't I?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: You're more likely to be molested by a little league coach than a priest.
Could I have your source for that, please?
ha ha ha. good one.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:It's Javert. He means it when he says you're guilty.
I know he didn't mean it literally, that he was actually pointing out that 'terrorist arrest' does not necessarily equal 'terrorist action'. I was just wondering whether he would accord the same skepticism to a child molestation arrest of a Catholic priest as he would a terrorist arrest of a Muslim.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
It's Javert!!! He thinks that everyone is guilty. And should be locked in French prisons. Especially Jean Valjean.
Since I was too subtle last time. Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ah! Even puppies? Are puppies guilty?
---
Anyway, it was a serious question. Terrorist arrests falling under things that interest you, I think, Javert, you obviously would not think arrest=guilt there. And I'm sure you wouldn't after thinking about it, think otherwise about child molestation arrests either.
My question was about the initial, instinctive reaction was all. It's the kind of thing I wonder about myself, that I watch out for and sometimes find to my dismay, so I was just curious.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
French puppies are guilty.
More seriously, I think that the percentage of priest who abuse children is probably higher than that of the population at large if only because men are more likely to abuse and Catholic priests are men. It is also important to remember that the vast majority of priests who do molest children are not molesting pre-pubescent children. Most are hebephiles or ephebophiles. This may be more prevalent in the priesthood than in the general population because of young men who turn to a celibate life in an (often futile) attempts to repress sexual urges and whose psycho-sexual maturity is arrested.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: You're more likely to be molested by a little league coach than a priest.
Could I have your source for that, please?
In one of the the news reports about the current sex abuse lawsuit in Oregon it said that the state currently has more complaints against boy scout leaders than priests.
But the access issue is the same there. Maybe even greater since boy scouts sponsor camping trips more often than most church youth groups do.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Thanks. Hmmm...I was hoping for some actual statistics. They are really hard to find due to secrecy and underreporting and so forth. This may lead to some other info.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Dude, be serious, Steven: for you that credibility was long gone.
You're comparing me to the Catholic Church? LOL
No, seriously, I want to hear this. Do tell. LOL
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
I took Rakeesh's statement to mean that, to you, the Catholic church had already lost all credibility long before you read that link.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven:
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Dude, be serious, Steven: for you that credibility was long gone.
You're comparing me to the Catholic Church? LOL
No, seriously, I want to hear this. Do tell. LOL
you're misreading him LOL
LOL
LOL
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I can see where you'd think I was insulting you, steven, but Sean and Samprimary are right: I was pointing out that it doesn't seem like, for you, the Catholic Church had any credibility left.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I can see where you'd think I was insulting you, steven, but Sean and Samprimary are right: I was pointing out that it doesn't seem like, for you, the Catholic Church had any credibility left.
Never mind whether they had credibility with ME...the fact that senior members of the Vatican actually consider themselves persecuted is compelling evidence that they have lost touch, totally. Losing touch isn't exactly, I think, what Jesus meant when he talked about publicans and sinners, etc.. The Vatican, though, seems as though it hasn't just lost touch with the publicans and sinners...they've lost touch with everybody.
I think the senior Vatican has more in common with inmates in an asylum than they do with everyday people. Maybe the church hierarchy needs a turnover. Do it like we do with our elected officials in the US...throw them out!
I bet they'd do some regaining of touch if they had to work normal jobs around average people. Maybe.
Or are they more special?
Maybe they're too special to have to deal with the likes of normal people.
Oh wait...no, I think Jesus wouldn't have approved...hmmm...remarkable, the irony.
To Sam---was that meant to be a substantive post?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
If his wasn't...was yours?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: To Sam---was that meant to be a substantive post?
Only in the sense that i'm trying to get you to stop the whole LOL thing.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Yes, but this is hardly news from a Canadian POV. Quebec Catholics have been even more visible in their objection to papal authority in the examples of Prime Ministers Trudeau, Chretien, and Martin.
What I was curious was about the reasoning that you couldn't simply become an Anglican and carry over those elements of ritual that you find compelling from Catholicism (as the inverse of the Pope allowing Anglicans to carry over Anglican rituals).
The line of argument outlined in the forward is that if you assume that the Catholic church is the "true" church, then it is a sin to convert (since it is a form of saying that the church is wrong), a sin to leave the community of Catholics, and that merger with other churches like the Anglican church must be done on a church-level and not on an individual level.
The reason I don't want to pursue, is that this line of reasoning has almost no overlap with arguments based on how effective or how moral the system of the church is. Effectively, the priests, bishops, and pope could be the meanest and most criminal people on Earth, but the Catholic church would still be the "true" church and those arguments would still apply.
(Which is kinda depressing really)
It looks like this thread's otherwise degenerated into nonsense, but Mucus' post is worth reading twice. Boots, I don't really have the desire or time to convert you -- if you're satisfied with your beliefs, however mismatched they are with Catholicism, I wish you the best. However, please remember that the pedophile ring within the Church relies on people like you to continue supporting them without consequence.
I've just had a remarkable similar discussion with a Muslim friend of mine, who's convinced she's Muslim despite her full embrace of Western lifestyle. Religion seems to be far more of a tribal identity than any particular set of beliefs.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Lalo, you are simply going to have to take my word for it that for the past 35 years I have studies several religions - even took some seminary classes. Attended services regularly (weekly or better) for Catholic, Methodist, UCC, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Lutheran congregations. Worked as a Director of Children's Ministries for a large church. Attended mass regularly for 10 years. Formally studied for a year to convert to Catholicism, talked to many priests, directors of faith formation, engaged lay Catholics, nuns, and even the head of a religious order. After I converted I sponsored, mentored and taught other people considering conversion to Catholicism. Catholicism fits what I believe. Every class I sat thinking, "this is exactly right. This fits what I know."
What, for goodness sake, makes you think that you know more about me or about what it means to be Catholic than all those people?
The pedophile ring is being taken down by engaged, angry, Catholics. There are consequences and the Vatican is feeling those. Things are changing.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:...you to continue supporting them without consequence.
This is precisely what she's doing.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I suppose I support the Church the same way that I support my country when I protested against the invasion of Iraq.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
If only you weren't such a stupid sheep!
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Bah.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Lalo, you are simply going to have to take my word for it that for the past 35 years I have studies several religions - even took some seminary classes. Attended services regularly (weekly or better) for Catholic, Methodist, UCC, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Lutheran congregations. Worked as a Director of Children's Ministries for a large church. Attended mass regularly for 10 years. Formally studied for a year to convert to Catholicism, talked to many priests, directors of faith formation, engaged lay Catholics, nuns, and even the head of a religious order. After I converted I sponsored, mentored and taught other people considering conversion to Catholicism. Catholicism fits what I believe. Every class I sat thinking, "this is exactly right. This fits what I know."
What, for goodness sake, makes you think that you know more about me or about what it means to be Catholic than all those people?
The pedophile ring is being taken down by engaged, angry, Catholics. There are consequences and the Vatican is feeling those. Things are changing.
As to your first question, you've directly contradicted and dismissed Catholic dogma in this thread alone. You have ideas of reforming the Church with no apparent awareness of your helplessness within the Church hierarchy. You don't seem to understand Catholic theology or bureaucracy, despite your many years of study.
And no, sadly, there are no consequences and nothing is changing. The Church has waited out worse enemies than you. And you don't even particularly qualify as an enemy in the first place -- you pose no threat, not even of leaving for a less corrupt religion.
You're living in a dream world, where your passive outrage will somehow upset the Church hierarchy, reform the Vatican, revise Catholic theology, and redefine priestly relations with little boys. For your sake, as well as for all those little kids, I hope you realize that your only power over the Church is to leave it and try to hold them accountable by secular authorities.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
(For the record, I didn't and don't think this is a road worth going down, nor do I think this is a particularly good way of going about it)
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
You do realize that one does not have to leave the Church in order to demand that it be held accountable by secular authorities? Again, take the example of Fr. Doyle. He has spent the past 25 years making sure that the Church faced civil consequences as an advocate for victims and as an expert witness for plaintiffs in hundred of lawsuits against the Church all over the world.
You think he should have just walked away? What makes you think you know better than he does? You haven't even given a reason that you know better than I do. If my opinion on specific dogma (about which you are mistaken) isn't a problem for the priests who taught me, the Church professionals hired to teach me, my sponsors or the bishop who approved my reception into Full Communion, why do you think it is a problem.
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: You do realize that one does not have to leave the Church in order to demand that it be held accountable by secular authorities? Again, take the example of Fr. Doyle. He has spent the past 25 years making sure that the Church faced civil consequences as an advocate for victims and as an expert witness for plaintiffs in hundred of lawsuits against the Church all over the world.
You think he should have just walked away? What makes you think you know better than he does? You haven't even given a reason that you know better than I do. If my opinion on specific dogma (about which you are mistaken) isn't a problem for the priests who taught me, the Church professionals hired to teach me, my sponsors or the bishop who approved my reception into Full Communion, why do you think it is a problem.
But isn't Father Doyle's example proving my point rather than yours? If he's really worked this hard within the Church for 25 years (and I don't doubt it), why hasn't he put fear of God in the Vatican? Why have they continued as ever, without suffering any real consequences from the revelations of the past few decades? I don't expect that one man could make a huge difference alone, but isn't it better to address the disease of corruption rather than individual symptomatic cases of rape?
Yes, I say I he should have left the Church and taken as many people with him as he could. He should have demanded that Americans stop contributing to the Church until complete transparency is brought to the pedophile ring protected by the Vatican. It's not only the moral option, it's the practical option.
That said, I understand your stance. You don't want to leave the Church or your community of Catholics. And you believe that your protests will have some progressive change within the Church. I disagree, but I guess we'll have to leave it to time to tell who was right.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Lalo, Where do you think the many, many progressive changes that the Church has gone through have come from?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Twenty-five years is a tiny amount of time for such a deep change. And they have changed. Not willingly and they still don't "get it", but they are putting in place the policies that the laity are demanding. And the laity are demanding things from the bishops which is, in itself, a big and positive change.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:And the laity are demanding things from the bishops which is, in itself, a big and positive change.
In fact, I seem to recall that once there were very serious, even grave, consequences to the laity if they demanded anything from the clergy.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Canada this time ...
quote:The letter, written in 1993, focused on protecting the church’s image by preventing the scandal from becoming public – the very essence of an international wave of allegations now battering the Roman Catholic clergy and the Vatican.
“It is a situation which we wish to avoid at all costs,” the late Bishop Joseph Windle of Pembroke, Ont., wrote in Feb. 10, 1993, to the Pope’s envoy to Canada, Carlo Curis.
quote:The letter said it is “fortunate” that many of the victims were of Polish ancestry, devout Catholics who would be less likely to complain to secular authorities.
Wow. That is a hideous letter.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Yes it is and fairly typical of the attitude of the bishops. More concern for reputation of the Church than for the Church itself. And, as in so many things, it is the cover-up that is really damning.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The internet discussions on this subject are branching into the surreal.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Here? Where?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Well here has been pretty par for the course for hatrack's interesting midroads. Err, elsewhere it is turning into a flood of all of these ridiculous stories about Church malfeasance followed by incredulity in the face of some of the church's more callous or easily misinterpretable defenses (at one point they dragged gay marriage into this to act as a bogeyman. really? really really?)
and this turns into a back and forth between the diehard internet catholic apologists who keep reliably citing pages upon pages of dense dogma and insisting that there are 'internal mechanisms' or procedural issues that the non-catholics are just not considering or .. whatever .. and frustration and incredulity abound.
Like, two days ago: people going 'how could this get worse for the church' followed by more ugly news, followed by 'okay well that answered that question'
I don't even know how best to deal with it aside from stay out of the way. This has to be so disheartening for Catholics but at the same time there's something so so SO wrong with the church that they desperately don't want to address or may just be too institutionally malfeasant to be ABLE to address.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Give me a link and I'll go address it!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Give me a link and I'll go address it!
It's hardly even one thing at this point. Stories of screwed up church dealings are just pouring in at this point. Just go to google news and search for 'catholic'
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Ah...I was thinking you meant another forum type discussion.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I highly recommend Maureen Dowd's columns on this (and also the one on Bart Stupak and the nuns):
quote:Hartford, Connecticut (CNN) -- A bill in Connecticut's legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state's Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure.
Under current Connecticut law, sexual abuse victims have 30 years past their 18th birthday to file a lawsuit. The proposed change to the law would rescind that statute of limitations.
The proposed change to the law would put "all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk," says the letter, which was signed by Connecticut's three Roman Catholic bishops.
The letter is posted on the Web site of the Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference, the public policy and advocacy office of Connecticut's Catholic bishops. It asks parishioners to contact their legislators in opposition of the bill.
The "legislation would undermine the mission of the Catholic Church in Connecticut, threatening our parishes, our schools, and our Catholic Charities," the letter says.
The Catholic archdiocese of Hartford also published a pulpit announcement on its Web site, which was to be read during Mass on Sunday, urging parishioners to express opposition to the bill.
i mean okay this is part of what is making this so surreal.
quote:The proposed change to the law would put "all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk," says the letter, which was signed by Connecticut's three Roman Catholic bishops.
quote:The "legislation would undermine the mission of the Catholic Church in Connecticut, threatening our parishes, our schools, and our Catholic Charities," the letter says.
Read that. Seriously! They did not think this through at all.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Really! The only Church institutions that would be put at risk by this legislation are those that insist on protecting child molesters and those who enabled them. And they darn well should be put at risk.
Instead of children being put at risk.
ETA: I looked for a comments page but didn't find one. I did send an email.
[ April 12, 2010, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Really! The only Church institutions that would be put at risk by this legislation are those that insist on protecting child molesters and those who enabled them.
Not technically true . . . financial reparations could very easily affect programs/people that were completely uninvolved in wrongdoing.
"We can't fulfill our moral responsibility to victims of childhood sexual abuse because we're doing other good things with the money" is a pretty lame excuse, however.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
A better way for me to have put it is for that programs and people who are dependent on denying justice to victims should be put at risk. A shake up will ultimately be a good thing.
One thing, I have not found it difficult to direct my donations to specific charities or projects or parish projects instead of to the Church in general. At least if I can trust the people accepting those donations.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:if only because men are more likely to abuse and Catholic priests are men.
Women are more likely than men to abuse children (sexual abuse, I dunno; can't find a statistic on that); but here's my source:
The speaker admits that there is some difficulty in untangling percentage of time spent with children vs. propensity for abuse.
It's an interesting read nontheless.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I was referring to sexual abuse specifically, not child abuse in general. The statistics are difficult to find and are likely underreported but the most likely estimate I could find is that %14 percent of sexual crimes against boys and 6% against girls are committed by women. Now, that doesn't take into account whether most people commit one crime or hundreds, but I still think that it indicates pretty safely that, most, sexual abuse of children is done by men.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Well. There has been amusement at simultaneous stances by some those that proclaim that the child molestation scandals are 1) caused by the Jews and 2) that the persecution of Catholics is like the persecution of Jews.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
There has also been a lot of blaming it on Vatican II and liberalization which is demonstrably wrong as sexual abuse by clergy has been occurring for hundred of years.
Vatican II and liberalization could be blamed for people talking about it, rising up against it, but that is a good thing.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Holy @$^*, no pun intended.
This begs another question: how much of this bat@#!$ craziness was evident during his time as a bishop?
I didn't expect to be reading Constantine's Sword and have it be so dramatically relevant in terms of current events.
Maybe Babini's denial of having said those words is true. Man, I hope so...but I also hope that question will be investigated thoroughly.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:On Monday, the Vatican published a one-page document outlining the official steps dioceses should take if a priest is accused of abuse. The document did not appear to contain new guidance -- only to consolidate existing practices into one document.
Father Ciro Benedettini of the Vatican press office told CNN it was designed primarily to help the media understand Church procedures.
The document roused further criticism from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) whose spokesman Mark Serrano said: "It's sad when the Vatican has to make it clear to bishops that they must follow secular laws. It's fairly obvious that if you are saying you will now cooperate with the police then you are admitting that you have not been."
>__<
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
I am now subject to the law of gravity.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I am now subject to the law of gravity.
Oh S.N.A.P.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
[ April 16, 2010, 11:18 AM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
A rare (to me at least) newspaper article focusing on the possibility of whether rates of girls being abused is under-reported.
quote:An American study commissioned eight years ago and paid for by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops found that boys were overwhelmingly the likeliest target of predator priests. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice study, based on voluntary disclosure from church authorities (some refused to comply), determined boys accounted for 81 per cent of sex assaults. Most abuse for all victims occurred between 1960 and the 1980s.
But London-based lawyer Robert Talach, who represented McLauchlin and other Sylvestre victims, expects that male-female ratio to change within five to 10 years to reflect a trend that began in the 1970s when the church welcomed female altar servers. Researchers say disclosure of abuse is typically delayed for about 30 years, which means women assaulted as children are just starting to come to terms with what happened.
“In some of our Sylvestre cases, which are (from) the ‘70s, many of the women were victimized under the pretenses of ‘I’m training you to be one of these new, upcoming female altar servers,’" said Talach, who has represented more than 100 victims of clergy abuse, most of them male.
“We’ve seen priests using that to look innovative to their parishioners, but in reality it was to allow them access to women if their predilection was female.”
quote: Wall’s perspective on the degree of female abuse is unique. He was a Benedictine monk for 12 years, working as a “fixer” dispatched to tidy up messy sexual problems of priests and laymen at troubled parishes and schools. He said when a girl required surgery after rape, the code was that she needed a “hernia” operation.
In a bizarre twinning, he counselled accused priests and heard confessions from traumatized victims. He also worked on cases where priests impregnated girls then procured abortions for them.
“That is so prevalent, it happens all the time,” he said of the abortion runs, which in part accounts for his belief that teenaged girls are the silent majority of priest-related sexual abuse.
By age 33, Wall deduced most, if not all, of the 195 parishes and hundreds of religious orders in the U.S. employed “fixers” like him to wipe down crime scenes that involved children.
quote: 'No Belgian church escaped sex abuse', finds investigation
Child sex abuse by clergy or church workers has taken place in every Roman Catholic congregation in Belgium, according to an independent commission investigating paedophilia allegations.
quote:I want to appeal to Britain's Roman Catholics now, in the final days before Joseph Ratzinger's state visit begins. I know that you are overwhelmingly decent people. You are opposed to covering up the rape of children. You are opposed to telling Africans that condoms "increase the problem" of HIV/Aids. You are opposed to labelling gay people "evil". The vast majority of you, if you witnessed any of these acts, would be disgusted, and speak out. Yet over the next fortnight, many of you will nonetheless turn out to cheer for a Pope who has unrepentantly done all these things.
I believe you are much better people than this man. It is my conviction that if you impartially review the evidence of the suffering he has inflicted on your fellow Catholics, you will stand in solidarity with them – and join the protesters.
Some people think Ratzinger's critics are holding him responsible for acts that were carried out before he became Pope, simply because he is the head of the institution involved. This is an error. For over 25 years, Ratzinger was personally in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the part of the Vatican responsible for enforcing Catholic canonical law across the world, including on sexual abuse. He is a notorious micro-manager who, it is said, insisted every salient document cross his desk. Hans Küng, a former friend of Ratzinger's, says: "No one in the whole of the Catholic Church knew as much about abuse cases as this Pope."
We know what the methods of the church were during this period. When it was discovered that a child had been raped by a priest, the church swore everybody involved to secrecy, and moved the priest on to another parish. When he raped more children, they too were sworn to secrecy, and he was moved on to another parish. And on, and on. Over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round. The church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own "canon" law – which can only "punish" child rapists to prayer or penitence or, on rare occasions, defrocking.
Ratzinger was at the heart of this. He refuses to let any police officer see the Vatican's documentation, even now, but honourable Catholics have leaked some of them anyway. We know what he did. We have the paper trail. Here are three examples.
In Germany in the early 1980s, Father Peter Hullermann was moved to a diocese run by Ratzinger. He had already been accused of raping three boys. Ratzinger didn't go to the police, instead Hullermann was referred for "counselling". The psychiatrist who saw him, Werner Huth, told the Church unequivocally that he was "untreatable [and] must never be allowed to work with children again". Yet he kept being moved from parish to parish, even after a sex crime conviction in 1986. He was last accused of sexual abuse in 1998.
In the US in 1985, a group of American bishops wrote to Ratzinger begging him to defrock a priest called Father Stephen Kiesle, who had tied up and molested two young boys in a rectory. Ratzinger refused for years, explaining that he was thinking of the "good of the universal Church" and of the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke among the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age" of the priest involved. He was 38. He went on to rape many more children. Think about what Ratzinger's statement reveals. Ratzinger thinks the "good of the universal Church" – your church – lies not in protecting your children from being raped, but in protecting the rapists from punishment.
In 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appealed to Ratzinger to defrock Father Lawrence C Murphy, who had raped and tortured up to 200 deaf and mute children at a Catholic boarding school. His rapes often began in the confessional. Ratzinger never replied. Eight months later, there was a secret canonical "trial" – but Murphy wrote to Ratzinger saying he was ill, so it was cancelled. Ratzinger advised him to take a "spiritual retreat". He died years later, unpunished.
These are only the cases that have leaked out. Who knows what remains in the closed files? In 2001, Ratzinger wrote to every bishop in the world, telling them allegations of abuse must be dealt with "in absolute secrecy... completely suppressed by perpetual silence". That year, the Vatican actually lauded Bishop Pierre Pican for refusing to inform the local French police about a paedophile priest, telling him: "I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration." The commendation was copied to all bishops.
Once the evidence of an international conspiracy to cover up abuse became incontrovertible to any reasonable observer, Ratzinger's defenders shifted tack, and said he was sorry and would change his behaviour. But this June, the Belgian police told the Catholic Church they could no longer "investigate" child rape on Belgian soil internally, and seized their documents relating to child abuse. If Ratzinger was repentant, he would surely have congratulated them. He did the opposite. He called them "deplorable", and his spokesman said: "There is no precedent for this, not even under communist regimes." He still thinks the law doesn't apply to his institution. When Ratzinger issued supposedly ground-breaking new rules against paedophilia earlier this year, he put it on a par with... ordaining women as priests.
There are people who will tell you that these criticisms of Ratzinger are "anti-Catholic". What could be more anti-Catholic than to cheer the man who facilitated the rape of your children? What could be more pro-Catholic than to try to bring him to justice? This is only one of Ratzinger's crimes. When he visited Africa in March 2009, he said that condoms "increase the problem" of HIV/Aids. His defenders say he is simply preaching abstinence outside marriage and monogamy within it, so if people are following his advice they can't contract HIV – but in order to reinforce the first part of his message, he spreads overt lies claiming condoms don't work. In a church in Congo, I watched as a Catholic priest said condoms contain "tiny holes" that "help" the HIV virus – not an unusual event. Meanwhile, Ratzinger calls consensual gay sex "evil", and has been at the forefront of trying to prevent laws that establish basic rights for gay people, especially in Latin America.
I know that for many British Catholics, their faith makes them think of something warm and good and kind – a beloved grandmother, or the gentler sayings of Jesus. That is not what Ratzinger stands for. If you turn out to celebrate him, you will be understood as endorsing his crimes and his cruelties. If your faith pulls you towards him rather than his victims, shouldn't that make you think again about your faith? Doesn't it suggest that faith in fact distorts your moral faculties?
I know it may cause you pain to acknowledge this. But it is nothing compared to the pain of a child raped by his priest, or a woman infected with HIV because Ratzinger said condoms make Aids worse, or a gay person stripped of basic legal protections. You have a choice during this state visit: stand with Ratzinger, or stand with his Catholic victims. Which side, do you think, would be chosen by the Nazarene carpenter you find on your crucifixes?
quote:The first child sex scandal in the Catholic church took place in AD153, long before there was a "gay culture" or Jewish journalists for bishops to blame it on. By the 1960s, the problem had become so dire that a cleric responsible for the care of "erring" priests wrote to the Vatican suggesting that it acquire a Caribbean island to put them on.
What has made a bad situation worse, as the eminent QC Geoffrey Robertson argues in this coolly devastating inquiry, is canon law – the church's own arcane, highly secretive legal system, which deals with alleged child abusers in a dismayingly mild manner rather than handing them over to the police. Its "penalties" for raping children include such draconian measures as warnings, rebukes, extra prayers, counselling and a few months on retreat. It is even possible to interpret canon law as claiming that a valid defence for paedophile offences is paedophilia. Since child abusers are supposedly incapable of controlling their sexual urges, this can be used in their defence. It is rather like pleading not guilty to stealing from Tesco's on the grounds that one is a shoplifter. One blindingly simple reason for the huge amount of child abuse in the Catholic church (on one estimate, up to 9% of clerics are implicated) is that the perpetrators know they will almost certainly get away with it.
For almost a quarter of a century, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man who is now Pope, was in supreme command of this parallel system of justice – a system deliberately hidden from the public, police and parliaments and run, so Robertson maintains, in defiance of international law. Those who imagine that the Vatican has recently agreed to cooperate with the police, he points out, have simply fallen for one of its cynical public relations exercises. In the so-called "New Norms" published by Pope Benedict this year, there is still no instruction to report suspected offenders to the civil authorities, and attempting to ordain a woman is deemed to be as serious an offence as sodomising a child. There have, however, been some changes: victims of child abuse are now allowed to report the matter up to the age of 38 rather than 28. If you happen to be 39, that's just tough luck. As Robertson wryly comments, Jesus declares that child molesters deserve to be drowned in the depths of the sea, not hidden in the depths of the Holy See.
How can Ratzinger get away with it? One mightily important reason, examined in detail in this book, is because he is supposedly a head of state. The Vatican describes itself on its website as an "absolute monarchy", which means that the Pope is immune from being sued or prosecuted. It also means that as the only body in the world with "non-member state" status at the UN, the Catholic church has a global platform for pursuing its goals of diminishing women, demonising homosexuals, obstructing the use of condoms to prevent Aids and refusing to allow abortion even to save the life of the mother. For these purposes, it is sometimes to be found in unholy alliance with states such as Libya and Iran. Neither is it slow to use veiled threats of excommunication to bend Catholic politicians throughout the world to its will. If Pope Benedict were to air some of his troglodytic views with full public force, Robertson suggests, the Home Office would have been forced to refuse him entry into Britain.
"Petty gossip" is how the Pope has described irrefutable evidence of serious crimes. His time as the Vatican official in charge of overseeing priestly discipline was the period when, in Robertson's furiously eloquent words, "tens of thousands of children were bewitched, buggered and bewildered by Catholic priests whilst [Ratzinger's] attention was fixated on 'evil' homosexuals, sinful divorcees, deviate liberation theologians, planners of families and wearers of condoms".
Yeah, I dunno what else to say! The catholic church has pretty much irreparably harmed themselves.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
The nuns at the college where I work got together after Benedict's "election" and got hammered on cheap whiskey. You don't know righteous anger until you've seen a righteously angry Nigerian nun.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Thanks for posting those links.
Posted by Eaquae Legit (Member # 3063) on :
There are times when I don't know what to believe. I don't know how big, or how bad, the sex-abuse coverup is, but by now it's pretty impossible to deny it ever happened. Haggling over numbers is a bit moot at that point.
All I can say is, I'm ashamed this happened in my church, and there are definitely times where I feel like I'm Catholic despite the people in charge, now and historically.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
It is big and bad and the current crisis (abuse has been happening for almost as long as the Church has been around) has been going on for 30 years. And it hasn't "happened"; it is still happening. Children are still being hurt and bishops are still covering it up and stonewalling.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I was considering what happens to a religion when its moral center and its administrative center are so very separate, when it struck me, has there really ever been any other than very brief time when the Pope and Cardinals were reasonably the moral center of Catholicism? I can't think of one.
Also, it struck me, the current Pope is, to put it mildly, not a good person. This certainly isn't new. There have been out and out monsters in the papacy. But it makes me wonder about the sin of the Cardinals who elect them. That's got to be a pretty serious sin to so violate their responsibility. From what I can recall, the election of the Pope is doctrinally supposed to be the result of some pretty heavy guidance from God. To elevate someone like Ratzinger to papacy would thus involve decisively turning your back on God's guidance on a very important matter. I don't remember any sort of discussion with this in my education, but that really feels like a mortal sin. If that is actually the case, a majority of the College of Cardinals currently have an unrepented mortal sin on their souls.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Yep. Although they might not realize. After so many years of Pope John Paul II elevating only "yes-men" they may be so steeped in a corrupt culture that they have forgotten how to follow their own conscience much less the voice of God.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Meanwhile, the pope's UK visit will likely help smooth out concern and confusion over the recent controversies generated by church leadership oh wait nope
quote:The Pope has compared "atheist extremism" to the Nazi tyranny of WWII in a speech given in Edinburgh as he begins a four-day visit to the UK.
The pontiff praised Britain's fight against the Nazis - who "wished to eradicate God" - before relating it to modern day "atheist extremism".
Afterwards his spokesman Federico Lombardi said: "I think the Pope knows rather well what the Nazi ideology is".
Humanists have said the comments were a "terrible libel" against non-believers.
Blogger Ian Dunt, writing for Politics.co.uk, said the speech was "highly political" and might be seen as a warning about the direction of British society.
A senior Papal aide had earlier made remarks about England's "secularised" society, comparing it with a Third World country.
Cardinal Walter Kasper - who has been urged to apologise - later pulled out of the UK trip, with the Vatican citing illness.
In an interview with a German magazine he said: "England today is a secularised, pluralistic country. When you land at Heathrow Airport, you sometimes think you'd landed in a Third World country."
He went on to say "aggressive neo-atheism" was widespread in England.
really now
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Afterwards his spokesman Federico Lombardi said: "I think the Pope knows rather well what the Nazi ideology is".
I suppose I shouldn't have laughed at that. It was a bitter laugh if that counts for anything.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I think the "You know what's bad. Those forces which don't allow us to spread and cover up the rape of children. Those are the bad guys. Not like us, the people who support and protect child rapists. You need more of us." is a pretty hard sell. I would not be at all surprised if the Pope and the hierarchy's behavior is currently the main driver for people who were Catholic having abandoned the religion and potentially taking up atheism. That pro-child rapist stance is just a big sticking point for a lot of people.
Though, to be fair, I imagine the Nazis were probably against raping children in their care. The Catholic hierarchy was pretty slow in strongly opposing the Nazis. Maybe they're just trying to catch up.
Posted by Mucous (Member # 12331) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: ... In an interview with a German magazine he said: "England today is a secularised, pluralistic country. When you land at Heathrow Airport, you sometimes think you'd landed in a Third World country."
Sigh, taking shots at the atheists AND the immigrants of colour. Bah.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
He later issues an explanation which made him sound worse. As per usual, there's 'don't get me wrong, that totally wasn't racist'
Posted by Mucous (Member # 12331) on :
Surely he didn't do the, "I'm not racist, I'm friends with many black bishops."
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Jamaican bishops.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:In an interview with a German magazine he said: "England today is a secularised, pluralistic country. When you land at Heathrow Airport, you sometimes think you'd landed in a Third World country."
*laugh* The funny thing about this is that the skin color thing never occurred to me, so I was left thinking, "Huh? What about being secularized makes Britain look like a Third World country? In fact, isn't the reverse usually true?"
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: The funny thing about this is that the skin color thing never occurred to me
worry not; they're on top of clearing that up
quote:Cardinal Walter Kasper, the senior Catholic who prompted controversy on the eve of Pope Benedict's visit by comparing Britain to a third world country, has refused to apologise for his comments, his spokesman said today.
Kasper, 77, the Vatican's leading expert on relations with the Church of England, told a German magazine: "When you arrive at Heathrow you think at times that you've landed in a third world country."
Hours before the Pope flew to Scotland early today to start his four-day visit to the UK, Kasper's withdrawal from the trip for health reasons was announced.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the head of the Catholic church in Scotland, said he now expected an apology from Kasper.
"Sometimes we make awkward, difficult remarks ourselves," he told BBC Radio Scotland.
"And simply, if we do that sort of thing we apologise for it, and I'm sure Cardinal Kasper will apologise for any intemperate remarks which he made some time ago."
But Monsignor Oliver Lahl, Kasper's spokesman, said the cardinal considered the matter closed following a Vatican statement that claimed he was merely highlighting Britain's multi-ethnic makeup.
"Kasper meant to say there are people there from all around the world and you could be in Mumbai, Kinshasa, Islamabad or Nairobi," said Lahl.
"It was not a negative connotation, it was the opposite of racism. He meant the UK is no longer a mono-ethnic or mono-religious state, and can be a positive example for Europe."
remember: not a negative connotation. and definitely the opposite of racism.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Right. Because Kinshasa, Islamabad, Mumbai, and Nairobi are "multi-ethnic". Assumming that "multi-ethnic" means "not white". And "third world" means "positive example."
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yeah, when people say 'Third World' I always think 'positive example'. If there weren't so many awful and harmful ways their behavior was working in the world, it would be funny to see just how stupid these leaders think people really are.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
People don't understand. He was just saying, "Man, there sure are a lot of poor darkies around." I mean, what's to be upset about that?
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
You can't blame the church, but the imperfect people that are part of it. Whether they are in leadership positions or not, we are all human, and we can all make mistakes or the choice to do evil.
Every church or group has its people that go against what they teach. I knew missionaries I served with that got sent home and excommunicated for questionable activity. Human's aren't perfect, we just try to be.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Exactly. Like an elderly guy who has been isolated from the real world for decades.
ETA: That "Exactly" was to MrSquicky. Geraine, of course you can blame the Church. What do you think the Church is but the people in it? You can certainly darn well blame the Vatican and the Pope. Sure they are people who make mistakes but these people have a great deal of power and have been making some humdinger mistakes for generations. Often because they won't acknowledge that they are people who make mistakes.
[ September 16, 2010, 06:25 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:You can't blame the church...
Geraine, if we can't blame 'the church' for this sort of institutionalized apathy, negligence, contempt, and even outright evil, then frankly 'the church' can't be credited with any of the good things, and there are many, that its millions of members worldwide do and have done over centuries either. You simply cannot have it both ways, and there's no working around that with 'everyone's a little bit bad'. Everyone is a little bit bad, yes, but not everyone's attitude towards the rape and sexual molestation of children is that secular authorities should mind their own business. The people who are aren't trying to be perfect, they're trying desperately to cultivate an image of perfection, which is definitely not the same thing. I certainly don't recall anything in the Bible about that, though perhaps there's something the Borgias might have to say on the subject.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
quote:Originally posted by Geraine: You can't blame the church
I am sure the pope wants us to think so, but there is absolutely no reason why the church cannot be blamed. It is an institution as fallible as any other, whether they claim godly righteousness or magic people who speak to or are spoken to by god.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I think what Gerain is saying is we cannot blame the Catholic church insofar as the doctrine they propagate specifically condemns this sort of thing. Compared to sinning against the holy ghost, only offenses committed against children are condemned as strongly by Jesus.
Where the church falls on a scale of 0-10, 0 being absolutely complicit in these abuses, and 10 being absolutely stalwart in doing all that could reasonably be asked of them in dealing with these priests, is where I think blame enters in.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:You can't blame the church, but the imperfect people that are part of it
If the structure of the church is such that imperfect people are more likely than others to be put in a position where they abuse others, then I think you can blame the church. The LDS church hasn't had the same sort of problems as the Catholic church and part of the reason for that is, I think, the difference in the structure of the church, the nature of priesthood offices, etc.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:I think what Gerain is saying is we cannot blame the Catholic church insofar as the doctrine they propagate specifically condemns this sort of thing.
I disagree with this, in that the structure and doctrine of the Church lends itself especially to these sorts of abuses (those of the hierarchy, not the child rape).
I had a thread not that long ago about abstinence only education. When it's done by Christians with their traditional way of doing things, it is an abject failure. There is some evidence coming along now that other ways of doing this are much more successful.
I don't grant that because they are teaching the kids, emphatically so, that they shouldn't have sex, it's not their fault that the kids often will engage in even riskier sexual behavior than if they had not gotten this education at all. Because their content and style of teaching consistently gets these results while other ways don't, their program about abstinence is responsible for the kids sexually risky behaviors.
I see similar factors operating here. The structure and doctrine of the Catholic Church contains elements that produce this sort of behavior. They have done so consistently over the history of the Church. Other structures and doctrines do not have these effects. Thus, along with the people in the Church, you can blame the structure and doctrines of the Church for this
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
Yeah, I think we most certainly can blame the church. The institutionalized secrecy and the ban against marriage are certainly parts of the problem.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I think what Gerain is saying is we cannot blame the Catholic church insofar as the doctrine they propagate specifically condemns this sort of thing.
The doctrine they propagate also conceals these acts from law enforcement and protects the criminal abusers in an attempt to 'save face' for the church and shield them from criticism, in a cycle that negligently got tens of thousands of children abused.
Tens of thousands.
Putting blame on the church isn't just in order, it's the first order of the day!
Pope JPII delivered a mass in Scotland in 1982 and drew a crowd of 300,000. Today at the same venue: 70,000. You want to turn Catholicism from a world power at the core of christian mythicism into an archaic curiosity, a broken has-been? You wanna do it to yourself in practically a single generation? This is how to do it.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Think maybe he will understand why? Sadly, he seems more likely to blame it on "secular society."
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
MrSquicky:
quote:I disagree with this, in that the structure and doctrine of the Church lends itself especially to these sorts of abuses (those of the hierarchy, not the child rape).
The moment you wrote out the word 'structure' your premise differed from mine.
As far as their holy books are concerned, child abuse is absolutely condemned in as harsh of terms as they can be. "Better that they place a millstone around their neck and jump into the sea."
But perhaps I am overstepping doctrinal speaking as their clergy being completely unable to marry I think correlates with this problem. However the fact they choose to sweep it under a rug of secrecy is not something that is doctrinal supported but is an institutional problem.
In playing the blame game. In regards to the bible giving license for priests to sexually abuse children, no way. As far as the Catholic church "doing all that could be reasonably asked of them in dealing with these priests," yes.
----
Samp: You are misunderstanding me.
quote:The doctrine they propagate also conceals these acts from law enforcement and protects the criminal abusers in an attempt to 'save face' for the church and shield them from criticism, in a cycle that negligently got tens of thousands of children abused.
What doctrine are you talking about? When I use the term I am talking purely about scripture and it's interpretation. Not historical precedence in how a church is run.
I tend to be slow to judge as it seems irrational to me that Pope Benedict found out about these abuses and thought, "Darn it, another stupid kid ratted out a priest, better move him to another parish where he can start dating again." I would like to understand what motivations went into such a terrible response to a horrific problem. "The Pope hates children," is a conclusion I would only come to were every single other explanation adequately ruled out.
edited for grammar.
[ September 17, 2010, 05:02 PM: Message edited by: BlackBlade ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
BlackBlade,
quote:As far as their holy books are concerned, child abuse is absolutely condemned in as harsh of terms as they can be. "Better that they place a millstone around their neck and jump into the sea."
I do agree with this. It's pretty clear that the actual tenets that the leaders of Catholicism are supposed to be following are very much at odds with the kind of leadership that takes exception to secular authority wanting to take a stronger hand in investigating child abuse at the hands of clergy.
quote: But perhaps I am overstepping doctrinal speaking as their clergy being completely unable to marry I think correlates with this problem. However the fact they choose to sweep it under a rug of secrecy is not something that is doctrinal supported but is an institutional problem.
I'm not sure that the inability to marry is linked myself, either, or if it's necessarily tied to the secrecy. I do sometimes wonder, though, if that in the sense that it sets a bit of a gap between the clergy and the laity that it makes that impulse easier.
quote: I tend to be slow to judge as it seems irrational to me that Pope Benedict found out about these abuses and thought, "Darn it, another stupid kid ratted out a priest, better move him to another parish where he can start dating again." I would like to understand what motivations that went into such a terrible response to a horrific problem. "The Pope hates children," is a conclusion I would only come to were every single other explanation adequately ruled out.
This seems to me to be a pretty sharp departure from what Samprimary and others have actually accused the RC leadership from doing, though. They are accusing the leadership of primarily acting to save face, not of actual mustache-twirling child-hating villainy. Now, ten or fifteen years ago, I would perhaps have been skeptical that the leadership's first impulse was towards face-saving. Now? At this point, honestly I am more than a little shocked that anyone doesn't believe that is their first impulse.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
BB, It looks like you are talking about the priests raping children. That's not what I think any of the people criticizing the Church are talking about. I explicitly said as much in the sentence you quoted.
I don't know that anyone is blaming the Catholic Church as a whole or the Pope for the first time a priest under their control raped a child. However, when the Church hierarchy finds out about this and shelters and protects that priest so they he can go on to rape other children, that we are blaming on them. When they threatened bishops with excommunication if they went to the police with these heinous crimes, we blame them. And as they are currently lobbying against laws designed to prevent and/or redress child rape, we blame them for that.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
The doctrine of celibacy is part of the problem. When the Church makes basically no distinction between a priest engaging in consensual sex with an adult and raping a child, that is a big part of the problem and it is doctrinal. (BlackBlade, our doctrine is based on more than just Scripture.) When, because of celibacy, young men think that they can avoid dealing with their "bad" sexual urges by becoming priests, that is part of the problem.
quote: I tend to be slow to judge as it seems irrational to me that Pope Benedict found out about these abuses and thought, "Darn it, another stupid kid ratted out a priest, better move him to another parish where he can start dating again." I would like to understand what motivations that went into such a terrible response to a horrific problem. "The Pope hates children," is a conclusion I would only come to were every single other explanation adequately ruled out.
Honestly, that is sadly not as far off as it should be, though more in line of, "darn it another kid is talking. This looks bad. We have to protect our reputation. How can we make this go away quietly? Let's move the priest to another parish where no one knows him and hope he doesn't do it again. And we'll pressure the kid and his family to make sure that they don't talk. With any luck, no one will believe him anyhow. Also, we have to make sure that any of the clergy who might be concerned about this is ordered to keep their mouths shut."
Yes. That bad.
And the doctrine of obedience makes that possible.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
kmbboots:
quote:BlackBlade, our doctrine is based on more than just Scripture.
That's fine if you are using the word that way, I'm not, but I don't think you are wrong.
MrSquicky:
quote:I don't know that anyone is blaming the Catholic Church as a whole or the Pope for the first time a priest under their control raped a child. However, when the Church hierarchy finds out about this and shelters and protects that priest so they he can go on to rape other children, that we are blaming on them. When they threatened bishops with excommunication if they went to the police with these heinous crimes, we blame them. And as they are currently lobbying against laws designed to prevent and/or redress child rape, we blame them for that.
I'm not arguing with you on this point. Merely proposing that Geraine might have meant we can't blame the church in that Christians should universally understand their religion abhors this sort of behavior. The black mailing, strong arming, rug sweeping, are all failings on the part of the Catholic Church as an institution.
Maybe the distinction isn't very useful, I personally think this is the sort of thing that requires heads to be busted and butts to be kicked, I just wanted to caution people to be gentle before they unleash their emotions at Geraine.
I get that almost every time something bad is done in the name of religion somebody says, "Don't blame the religion, blame the people." It's an overused truth-ism, even if I do believe it.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Our doctrine is based on tradition as well as Scripture. To be clear, I don't think that those things I mentioned are good doctrine or that one has to believe them to be Catholic (obviously!) but our Church does teach those things. The current Pope decided both as Pope and in his former position as Prefect for the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the group charged with making sure people were behaving according to doctrine - formerly the Inquisition) that keeping things quiet and protecting the reputation of the Church was more important that protecting children from harm or giving comfort to those that had been harmed.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Kate: Again, it's fine you are using it that way, heck as a Catholic yourself I'll grant that's how Catholics mean the word 'doctrine.'
For me, my church has business enterprises and interests for example. Doctrinally there is no basis for that, either in the affirmative or negative. One might argue that because the prophet has OK'd it, it can't be wrong, but for me that's as far as it goes.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
By doctrine I mean things that are taught by the Church. Obviously, "it is okay to rape children" is not doctrine, but celibacy is and obedience to the hierarchy is though I would (and have) argue that it is not necessarily received doctrine. The Pope thinks it is anyway.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: By doctrine I mean things that are taught by the Church. Obviously, "it is okay to rape children" is not doctrine, but celibacy is and obedience to the hierarchy is though I would (and have) argue that it is not necessarily received doctrine. The Pope thinks it is anyway.
I see, I think I understand your POV. Thanks for writing it all out.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
quote:Originally posted by Geraine: You can't blame the church
I am sure the pope wants us to think so, but there is absolutely no reason why the church cannot be blamed. It is an institution as fallible as any other, whether they claim godly righteousness or magic people who speak to or are spoken to by god.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
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I'll correct that by saying that, while the Pope et al are certainly part of the Church, they are not more the Church than the rest of us.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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I mean, they kind of had this Revolution thing to get away from the monarchy, you know?
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