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When will we hold the Catholic church actually responsible?

Mai72

Mai72

Lifer
Absolutely insane. That the church can get away with the abuse of young boys, and NOTHING happens!

I don't care what the Pope has to say. The system is corrupt. Those priest should be thrown in jail. Instead they were moved from parish to parish.

And, over 90 years! WTF.. No one knew? It took over 90 years for the abuse to come to light.

www.cnn.com

More than 450 Catholic clergymen abused nearly 2,000 children in Illinois, state report says | CNN

More than 450 adult Catholic clergymen abused nearly 2,000 children in the state of Illinois over a period of almost 90 years, according to a report released Tuesday from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com
 
I never understand how they get away with it. any normal person would be in prison. why are they above the law? if anything they should be punished harsher due to their supposed higher moral calling.

a fairly easy fix for catholics would to be allow their clergy to be married. would fix at least 90% of this issue i feel.
 
soulcougher73 said:
I never understand how they get away with it. any normal person would be in prison. why are they above the law? if anything they should be punished harsher due to their supposed higher moral calling.

a fairly easy fix for catholics would to be allow their clergy to be married. would fix at least 90% of this issue i feel.
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Because religion. If there is a God, do Catholics think that the God of the bible will ignore what their Christian denomination has done to young boys and the indigious peoples of this world?

My favorite debate of all time. The Catholic church vs Hitchens and Frye.

 
I think the "defence" (and it's not really a defence) would be that the Catholic Church is not the only institution that has these problems.

I'm not a Christian, just trying to be fair. It's horrifying the range of different institutions and groups that have turned out to have a culture of sexual abuse (the BBC, Canadian residential schools, certain extremist political groups, children's homes run by Catholics and Protestants alike...).

Another one

www.theguardian.com

NHS England mental health trusts record 26,000 sexual abuse incidents

The data over five years puts spotlight on underfunded hospitals where abuse can often easily be hidden, say experts
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Many of the most abusive institutions do seem to be religion based, but by no means all of them. I can't quite work out what the wider lesson is. Maybe just...don't trust claims to authority, ever? Whether religious, political, or "scientific"?
 
I would agree though, that groups that claim to be "religious" seem to get a level of deference, above-and-beyond what other organizations get (especially in the US), that they don't merit. Which maybe makes it even easier for them to cover up such things.
 
If you are bent on abusing children you have to have a way to get to them. Where would you find lots of children and a way to get close enough to manipulate them without drawing attention to what your aims are. That would be any place where one can exercise control and authority over them. The church, schools, children's organizations like scouting, athletic clubs etc. I see two important qualifications. Does the job provide authority and is it deemed to have positive goals that provide practitioners social status and political respect. Evil loves to hide behind power, authoritativeness, and social status.

Psychologically, the thrill is living dangerously and getting away with it by walking a knife edge between egotistical self gratification and the getting caught. Practitioners are unaware we create what we fear.
 
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Moonbeam said:
If you are bent on abusing children you have to have a way to get to them. Where would you find lots of children and a way to get close enough to manipulate them without drawing attention to what your aims are. That would be any place where one can exercise control and authority over them. The church, schools, children's organizations like scouting, athletic clubs etc. I see two important qualifications. Does the job provide authority and is it deemed to have positive goals that provide practitioners social status and political respect. Evil loves to hide behind power, authoritativeness, and social status.

Psychologically, the thrill is living dangerously and getting away with it by waling a knife edge between egotistical self gratification and the getting caught. Practitioners are unaware we create what we fear.
Click to expand...
At least 2 person rules should be universal in all of those environments. No one on ones.
 
hal2kilo said:
At least 2 person rules should be universal in all of those environments. No one on ones.
Click to expand...
In some places that could potentially mean pedo 1 and 2.

Personally I would prefer an education system that suggests to parents to teach their kids not to be able to be manipulated by fear, and treats pedophilia as a disease people should be able to seek treatment for without stigmatization in leu of secret actions to succumb to it.

I see it as a form of self hate where one’s sense of inadequacy to perform sexual with responsible women or men has been experientially castrated leaving the only innocent and naive children as targets where there will be less imagined fears of that nature.

But this is my speculation. Answers if any, to this form of aberration would probably require years of scientific investigation.

What I feel pretty sure of is that anybody so afflicted with a determination to have sex with children would in this world be likely not to seek help until getting caught at which point I can imagine all manner of bullshit promises not to offend again.
 
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MrSquished said:
The drag queens made them do it.
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Oh these guys in dresses?

iu
 
soulcougher73 said:
I never understand how they get away with it. any normal person would be in prison. why are they above the law? if anything they should be punished harsher due to their supposed higher moral calling.

a fairly easy fix for catholics would to be allow their clergy to be married. would fix at least 90% of this issue i feel.
Click to expand...
They got away with it because the various Catholic Archdiocese protected the priests. Bishops just moved them from church to church - only making matters worse. Later on the priests were sent away for psychotherapy for a while and kept away from children (mostly) for a time. Turns out - there is no cure for pedophelia. A small percentage would learn to control their 'urges', but the serial pedophiles just couldn’t. This bishops compounded the problem by lying to Vatican officials saying it was a minor problem compared to heteo/homosexual affairs among the clergy. The Vatican, of course, accepted the fact that even priests were capable of terrible evils.

Obviously, with possibly a few exceptions, they all should have be turned over to law enforcement and been laicized as well (stripped or priestly faculties, rights and obligations). That should have been happening at least 30 years ago when it was clear that psychotherapy alone wasn’t doing the trick for most priests. The horror of priests committing acts of sexual abuse was compounded by a broken system that completely failed the Catholic laity (who’s kids were the victims).

Marriage, as has often been suggested as the 'cure' just isn’t the answer. As happens, most of these priests were victims of child sexual abuse themselves. As with pedophile married men in families, they still victimize their own relations - even their own children, or, as in the scouts, other children normally outside their orbit.

Much of what is coming to light over the past 5 years or so, is the result of compelling dioceses to hand over their records from the past 50, 75 or more years. So, the pain and outrage will continue.

Even though progress has been made, I hope the next pope does a better job and picks someone with the strength and humility to fix these problems. Unfortunately, making changes in such a large organization is like turning around an aircraft carrier on the Mississippi.
 
Religion is a cult, doesn't matter which religion. Christian, Jews, muslim, they are all cults, and cult leaders use that power to groom and violate others.
Republicans have morphed a political view into a cult

Cults are hotbeds of males sexually abusing anyone they can.
 
pmv said:
I think the "defence" (and it's not really a defence) would be that the Catholic Church is not the only institution that has these problems.

I'm not a Christian, just trying to be fair. It's horrifying the range of different institutions and groups that have turned out to have a culture of sexual abuse (the BBC, Canadian residential schools, certain extremist political groups, children's homes run by Catholics and Protestants alike...).

Another one

www.theguardian.com

NHS England mental health trusts record 26,000 sexual abuse incidents

The data over five years puts spotlight on underfunded hospitals where abuse can often easily be hidden, say experts
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Many of the most abusive institutions do seem to be religion based, but by no means all of them. I can't quite work out what the wider lesson is. Maybe just...don't trust claims to authority, ever? Whether religious, political, or "scientific"?
Click to expand...

Abuse takes place in other institutions like schools. My issue is the Catholic church takes the moral high ground because of Christanity.

I'm also upset because Catholics ignore these events and act like it never happened.
 
It's all a habit. It's taboo to criticize the clergy, so they get away with shit. It all starts at home. IMO parents should not tell their kids what to think.
 
Mai72 said:
Abuse takes place in other institutions like schools. My issue is the Catholic church takes the moral high ground because of Christanity.

I'm also upset because Catholics ignore these events and act like it never happened.
Click to expand...

I don't exactly disagree.

However it's by no means just Catholic priests. It's quite hard not to just conclude that the moral is "don't trust anyone in positions of authority".

I mean, nothing that terrible happened to me personally, but in retrospect it seems I had some quite narrow escapes in my childhood. There were multiple such people in positions of authority around me (many of them much later went to prison for what they did to others), and none of them were related to religion. It was more about political power and/or professional status (teachers, mental health professionals, and politicians, basically - and I don't mean some conspratorial network Q-anon style, I mean just a collection of individuals abusing their power - there seem to have been a lot of them around back then*).

Oddly enough though both my grandmothers were raised as Catholics, on opposite sides of the world, and both had similarly bad experiences that meant they never had a good word to say about the clergy. Seems to me though (at least outside of the unusually still-very-religious US) the baton of abusive-behaviour has since been passed on to more 'secular' institutions.

* actually, it occurs to me that it might be because there are many adults now who experienced that form of victimisation back then, is why there's fertile ground for those Q-anon style theories.
 
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I tend to think, at least outside of the US and a few other remaining heavily-religious countries, the mental health industry now plays the role that was once played by the Catholic church.

Like that institution it's in good part about propping up the status quo, and it has it's own self-serving priesthood, some of whom engage in outright abusive behaviour, much as priests did. And a true-believing flock who get upset if you question their faith. It also gets the patronage of royalty, much as the Catholic church once did.

Plus its ideology permeates popular culture the way that Christianity used to (nobody believes in demons any more, but if you have physical symptoms sans a diagnosis everyone will tell you that it's due to the mystical power of your mind).
 
pmv said:
the mental health industry now plays the role that was once played by the Catholic church.
Click to expand...
That's actually an interesting thought. I also tend to think sometimes that the importance of the church in the modern society is decreasing rapidly as they basically fail to give people what they need. Faith is still important but it's hard to find it behind all those rites and rich churches. Also, the Catholic church is especially entitled because they claim that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ directly and that he's impeccable when speaks about religious questions as the Pope. No other Christian denomination has that, no one (except maybe for some sect leaders) to directly represent Christ here on Earth.
 
Mai72 said:
I'm also upset because Catholics ignore these events and act like it never happened.
Click to expand...
You are greatly misinformed. This shook our world - a fair number stopped coming to mass because of this. We knew this was happening on 'rare' occasions - we had no idea of the scope of the problem or that church officials were covering it up. People seem to keep forgetting that the sex abuse was perpetrated on children in our own parishes (not mine thankfully). Reading the Boston Globe article, and later watching the movie - listening to the stories of the victims was painful beyond belief.

If it seems like we are ignoring it, it's only because we need to take care of our own spiritual needs and those of our families. We cannot allow our lives to be consumed by this one issue; it wouldn’t be psychologically helpful for anyone to do so.
 
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