I’m not disregarding any abuse. I hope every pedophile gets sentenced to life in prison. But, I do believe that the Catholic Church is unfairly stereotyped by the culture.
By the way, the amount of actual pedophilia in the Church was way lower than 5%. The vast majority of victims were teenage boys, not prepubescent children. That’s not to excuse any abuse, but just to clarify things.
My point is that our atheist culture in America doesn’t like Christianity or especially the Catholic Church, so they attack and stereotype it.
It’s the same as stereotyping Muslims as ISIS supporters, except, it’s politically correct to stereotype Christianity.
Abusive Priests were moved around, that is very true. One reason is that sexual abuse wasn’t as understood back in the 1970’s the way it is today. There was the idea that sexual abusers could be reformed with a little therapy, which we now know is not true.
That all stopped in 2002 in the Catholic Church with the Dallas Charter. Since those reforms, the amount of abuse cases has been tiny.
Sadly, sexual abuse is widespread in America. At least 25% of women are abused during their lifetimes. Most of the abuse takes place in families.
It didn’t stop in the 70s, the moving them around. How can an organization that considers itself having the, not a, but the direct line to God not understand something so fundamental about human nature and something that priests but also other adults have done since the church was formed.
That’s 2002. Even if you are correct, what does that have to do with the main point of my post. Bishops, the ones, running the administration of the charter are for no logical reason exempt from it. And this response from the Church only happened after incredible pressure from victims, journalists and others who faced ridicule, denial, evidence suppression, secrecy and pressure from powerful Catholics and others not to challenge the church. I am sure many in the church did not realize the extent of the problem. I am sure there are good people in there. But the church only buckled after incredible efforts by victims and journalists made it obvious to everyone the system was corrupt as a whole on this issue.
Sure, but families are not presenting themselves as the only route to God and having special powers in relation to divinity, absolution and so on. The Catholic church has heartily condemned the sins of others while at the same time hiding, protecting, suppressing evidence around the abuse of the members of its organization who kept the rite to act as representatives of the church and of God.
newsweek.com/priests-commit … ales-70625
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this means that the process of selecting for priests, the training, the mentorship in all the facets of leading rituals, prayer, contemplation, the authority granted these people, the special connection to God their training is supposed to lead to, the Bible study
did not reduce their behavior from the average.
How could the people who are focusing more energy than anyone else on scripture, God, practices, rituals
not have improved? And why should we believe, then, that these practices, scriptures, rituals, really go to the heart of spiritual matters? SAying that they commit the same amount of these crimes should make every Catholic have a crisis of faith.
And then, given what they are supposed to be, the betrayal is even greater. And it was much harder to prosecute them and confront them because they had a very powerful system to protect them and/or hide their crimes.
And since women are much less likely to abuse children, one has to wonder how long a church with deep insight into God, supposedly, would continue a sexist exclusion.
this means that the process of selecting for priests, the training, the mentorship in all the facets of leading rituals, prayer, contemplation, the authority granted these people, the special connection to God their training is supposed to lead to, the Bible study
did not reduce their behavior from the average.
How could the people who are focusing more energy than anyone else on scripture, God, practices, rituals
not have improved? And why should we believe, then, that these practices, scriptures, rituals, really go to the heart of spiritual matters? SAying that they commit the same amount of these crimes should make every Catholic have a crisis of faith.
And then, given what they are supposed to be, the betrayal is even greater. And it was much harder to prosecute them and confront them because they had a very powerful system to protect them and/or hide their crimes.
And since women are much less likely to abuse children, one has to wonder how long a church with deep insight into God, supposedly, would continue a sexist exclusion.
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The answer is that the Church is full of humans and humans are flawed because of original sin. Humans will always sin. The Church has perfect doctrine but not perfect members. Churches are hospitals for sinners and they are not museums for saints.
The Church has never claimed to have perfect members. Remember, Jesus had Judas as one of his twelve Apostles. He was betrayed by one of his own.
The process of choosing Priests was flawed for a very long time. There were thousands of Priests that should never have been ordained. That has drastically changed since 2002.
The bottom line is that the reason to join a Church is because one believes in the teachings and not because 5-10% of the members will perform evil acts.
Of course, they are human. But you are not responding to the points I raised. The priests are not just members of the church, they have gone through a rigorous process of selection and training, and are considered to be able to serve as a connection between the members of the church and God. And as I said above, but which you chose not to respond to, they have intensely interacted with scritpture with other priests and with the practices of Catholicism more than all but the most religious of other members of the church
and
this had no effect on them
in preventing them from committing horrendous crimes.
Nor did it keep their supervisers (bishops for example) from committing crimes of suppression, denial and reexposure of children to these men. Bishops of course having gone through even more rigorous selection and having spent even more time with the practices and scriptures of Catholicism.
But it absolutely claims special powers and special responsibilty for its priests. And the Church does claim special powers in their scriptures and practices, that these will lead to people being closer to God, better people, etc.
Yes, a very recent date and as I said above, only after tremendous external pressure, the loss of members and the revealing to the world of what the church has systematically been doing.
And as a I said above one should wonder about the teachings it the most rigorously trained members of the church were still capable and willing of committing those crimes, at the same percentages, as you said, as the regulat population.
I’m sorry. There’s a pattern in your responding. You don’t really respond to points made. So I am put in a position of repeating those points. This happened before and it is happening again. I leave you to others who don’t mind that sort of thing. You could perhaps contemplate the reasons you do this. It certainly doesn’t imply faith.
I do not think that the fault is necessarily because of the teachings of the Church, Christ’s teachings per se.
The Church that Christ founded did not teach that men or priests should sexually abuse children and I do not believe that Christ himself, if he was such a great, loving compassionate man, would condone or allow the sexual abuse of children. I also do not believe that Christ would, in order to preserve His Church, hide such a hideous secret and actions and protect priests.
These are all the doings of sexual predators, many of whom even became priests in order to have such access to young children just as other men gain access to young children by way of what they do for a living or for a hobby or “volunteering”.
Terrible, terrible thinking on the part of these patriarchal men who believe that they have the right to protect in the name of the church, preserving the church, EVEN to the detriment and harm to the pscyhe of these poor children. They are just as guilty as the sexual predators. As the kind of man each individual one is/was, he also felt that he had the right to protect other men. These men are just as sleazy to me as the sexual predator because they allow it to happen, they abuse their power, the kind of power which might have kicked these abuses right out of the church.
I think that part of the reason that this was allowed to happen too is because believers back then were taught to always kind of worship priests, didn’t realize that they are just as sinful as they, the believers, are themselves, and could never believe that God’s so-called chosen ones could perform such acts. Priests were always put on pedestals.
Who could believe that many of them could live such double lives, lives of such Lies and ugliness.
I do not think that the fault is necessarily because of the teachings of the Church, Christ’s teachings per se.
The Church that Christ founded did not teach that men or priests should sexually abuse children and I do not believe that Christ himself, if he was such a great, loving compassionate man, would condone or allow the sexual abuse of children. I also do not believe that Christ would, in order to preserve His Church, hide such a hideous secret and actions and protect priests.
These are all the doings of sexual predators, many of whom even became priests in order to have such access to young children just as other men gain access to young children by way of what they do for a living or for a hobby or “volunteering”.
Terrible, terrible thinking on the part of these patriarchal men who believe that they have the right to protect in the name of the church, preserving the church, EVEN to the detriment and harm to the pscyhe of these poor children. They are just as guilty as the sexual predators. As the kind of man each individual one is/was, he also felt that he had the right to protect other men. These men are just as sleazy to me as the sexual predator because they allow it to happen, they abuse their power, the kind of power which might have kicked these abuses right out of the church.
I think that part of the reason that this was allowed to happen too is because believers back then were taught to always kind of worship priests, didn’t realize that they are just as sinful as they, the believers, are themselves, and could never believe that God’s so-called chosen ones could perform such acts. Priests were always put on pedestals.
Who could believe that many of them could live such double lives, lives of such Lies and ugliness.
I did respond to your points. No offense but you clearly are not educated on this subject, which is fine, because the vast majority of people in our culture are not and are fed lies by the anti-Christ culture, which you have clearly bought into.
Before 2002, the Priests did not go through a “rigorous process of selection” as you falsely claim. As a matter of fact, many Priests were simply admitted into seminary only with one reference to their name. A Priest could become a Priest simply by being referred by their Pastor. Many Priests had no business being Priests. Some Bishops have said that hundreds or thousands of Priests should not have been ordained, not because they were sexual predators, but simply because they were not qualified.
Now, the process is entirely different and is actually rigorous which involves psychological testing and background checks. And there is a zero tolerance policy for abuse, which is working.
You are generalizing the Priesthood based on 5% of the bad Priests before 2002. You are simply not being realistic. There will ALWAYS be moral failings with human beings. Always. We see sexual abuse with Doctors, teachers, guidance counselors, boy scout leaders and even the President of the United States. Just because 5% of Priests were evil does not mean that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God because Judas betrayed Him.
Using your “logic” we should stop attending schools or seeing Doctors because 5% of them will abuse people…
You seem to think that the entire Catholic clergy are evil because 5% were abusers. This doesn’t make any logical sense and I’m sure you wouldn’t use that “logic” when judging other groups of people. There will ALWAYS be failings with human beings.
I do not think that the fault is necessarily because of the teachings of the Church, Christ’s teachings per se.
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I did not say it was their fault. I said it failed to prevent both the direct crimes against children and the self-protective very damaging systematic response to finding out about the behavior. According to his statistics, long study of scripture, prayer, rigorous Christian training, confession, carrying out the rite of confession, Christian contemplation did not reduce the abusiveness of these people and did not help the Chruch respond in a loving way to the victims or even to put effort into reducing future harm.
Obviously, so what you are saying is that The Church was utterly ineffective in helping people spiritually who engaged in it more than anyone else. How could that possibly be an organization that is a good line to God?
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There is no evidence that more people do that then enter other similar professions with access, like teaching. And yet, teaching, which is not aimed at getting closer to God, which focuses much more on practical than moral issues, and the education is not presented as a spiritual development including via divinely inspired texts and other men who have undergone spiritual training, show no more abuse of children then priests. This should make anyone wonder what value the Church has.
What we have here is a horrible empirical test iwth a control group. Put group A through the rigorous spiritual training of becoming a priest with all that entails in terms of Christian practices. Put group B though a mroe practical training with no spiritual component.
And see which group abuses kids more or less and see how each group of administrators deals with the reports better.
Result of the test: no difference as far as incidence of abuse. Even more defensive behavior on the part of administrators - who had even more spiritual training.
That’s damning evidence the Churches practices and scriptures failed.
And did they really forgive. To me forgiving is a real encounter. You see the remorse, you talk through it. You both sense that the person regrets their actions - not just the negative consequences for the abuser. Did this happen? I doubt it. And also, it isn’t really the church’s place to forgive the priest, except for whatever damage the priest did to the church. It’s the victims who are to forgive and their families. And perhaps their betrayed congregations.
There was probably some genuine remorse, some fake and some lack of remorse. Genuine remorse does not guarantee that there won’t be a recurrence.
It’s not clear from the NT what Jesus would do.
What does he do if the mob does not leave and they stone the woman?
How does he react if the adulterous woman is brought back a second time?
What do you do with the priest if the victim forgives him? Is that a second chance for him, if he shows remorse? Do you bring his actions to everyone’s attention?
Or should a priest be prosecuted through the secular legal system, whether he is forgiven or not, shows remorse or not? That would indicate that Christian ethics don’t work.
I can see the Blackwater CEO or Obama walking up to his genocidal posse and patting them on the shoulder, forgiving them for killing all those Iraqi children.
Very Christian that would be of them.
Forgiveness is for his soul. Both for the one who forgives and for the devil who raped a child.
He should in my opinion still be thrown in jail for at least a decade and find out what the real meaning is of what he did.
On the other hand falsely accusing of rape is more or less as grave as rape. Women or men who do that also need to be jailed for a good part of their lives.
Do you think that Jesus would, in actuality, act in the same way?
Here is a woman cheating on her husband and on the other hand there is a man having sex with children, destroying their innocence and their fragile psyche! Do you put them in the same category, phyllo?
Perhaps this is not such an easy answer. It is possible that the adulterous person is only harming herself. So Christ forgives and because of that, she sees the light and turns her life around.
Okay, the next time around she comes back and Christ speaks to her wanting to know why she is still cheating. I think that Christ would have a conversation with her, to get at the truth, to see her as she is. Okay, this time around, he forgives her as she shows remorse. If she returns again, he does not absolve here because she is not remorseful and changing her life.
Would Christ, as God too, forgive a sexual predator that easily? This is a sexual predator and knowledge would show that he cannot so much be helped or stopped. Forgiveness depends on a person’s remorse and determination never to commit the same thing again.
I am not sure how a priest would handle this one. If it were me, I would not absolve this man unless I knew that he would go and confess to the Church and the law, what he had done. He could only be absolved and forgiven if he got help and was really trying to turn his life around. I would myself would have to ask for the evidence of that.
Okay, let’s say that the prostitute comes back again. Oh, I do not know. lol. When one goes to confession, the priest through God, not the priest, but God, forgives. Supposedly this happens because God realized that humans are sinners, faulty people. I am not sure what I would do if I was a priest if someone repeatedly came back to me and confessed the same thing, especially if it was harming others. I think maybe a priest can refuse absolution under those circumstances but it would depend on the sin. It would have to be what is called a grave sin.
I do not know about that. Maybe that is because we seem to have simplified sin and made light of it. If Jesus were alive today as the Son of God and also fully human and he were a priest, do you think that he would so easily forgive someone who causes such harm to children? That he would so easily absolve? I do not think so.
Was Christ speaking about criminals here or was he speaking about our family, friends and our neighbors, speaking of their every day transgressions towards us (some that could be hurtful and harmful) - not the pedophile or the rapist or the wife beater, et cetera. Christ would necessarily be a rational and intelligent person and a compassionate one but a discerning, compassionate one. He would not absolve repeat offenders. He would be on the side of the victim. I suppose the only way in which he would forgive would be if he knew that the offender was full of guilt and remorse and was determined never to commit the act itself.
The thing about normal sinning lol “normal”? I think that human beings usually do believe at the time that they will try never to commit the sin again – the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. We are absolved because we do try and because we do believe it.