moviefreakedmind said:
RicOlie_2 said:
moviefreakedmind said:
It involves a minority of Catholics, but a majority of the Church’s most powerful officials are complicit at least.
Citation? I highly doubt that’s the case. I’m not sure how much you know about the way the Church works, but bishops are pretty autonomous, so the way they deal with issues is pretty localized.
They all know about it and most are choosing to do nothing. The current pope and his immediate predecessors know or knew about it and there’s direct evidence that Benedict XVI was directly involved in coverups before he became pope. The sex-abuse and their coverups are common knowledge. Ask anyone on the street and they’re familiar with it. Are you going to tell me, with a straight face, that the majority of officials in the Catholic Church are blissfully unaware of the mass child abuse that happens in its institution?
Again, this is just ignorance about the way the Church works. A bishop has no authority over another bishop’s affairs. It’s not like the bishops can just get together and vote the bad bishops out of office (although they can get together and agree on policies). It’s true that the popes and the higher up bishops who do have some authority haven’t done enough, but that by no means indicates that most bishops are complacent/apathetic. I know my bishop sure isn’t.
Also, Benedict XVI laicized at least 400 guilty priests in the course of two years. That’s not doing nothing.
It’s official policy to handle them internally rather than approaching the police, and by “handle” I mean relocate the offender to a new, unsuspecting parish. In the United States, and most civilized countries, abetting a felon is also a crime. I’m arguing for the religious institutions to be dismantled because of their crimes. If it turned out that JCPenney’s was doing this, then there’d be no debate over shutting down the corporation and arresting those responsible.
Where is this official policy? The reports that are coming out address incidents that have happened over the last 70-or-so years. Things have changed quite a bit in the last two or three decades. In most of Canada, I believe it has been official policy since the '80s to report things to the police.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pennsylvania-report-catholic-clergy-sex-abuse-scandal_us_5b2d4062e4b00295f15c56db
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/world/europe/german-church-sex-abuse-children.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld
https://nypost.com/2018/08/14/australia-archbishop-gets-house-detention-for-abuse-cover-up/
Also, happening over the last 70-or-so years is meaningless. “The last 70-or-so years” includes yesterday and today. I find it weird that you think “the church has done this throughout history” is a valid excuse. It actually plays more into my argument that the Church be viewed as a crime ring.
Those are certain local churches. Their failures don’t represent the Church as a whole. Furthermore, it’s simply wrong to say the Church has done nothing. In addition to laicizing guilty priests and removing guilty bishops from office: “by 2008 the U.S. church had trained 5.8 million children to recognize and report abuse. It had run criminal checks on 1.53 million volunteers and employees, 162,700 educators, 51,000 clerics and 4,955 candidates for ordination. It had trained 1.8 million clergy, employees and volunteers in creating a safe environment for children.” And “In June 2002, the [US Conference of Catholic Bishops] unanimously promulgated a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People [adopting] a “zero tolerance” policy for sexual abuse. The USCCB instituted reforms to prevent future abuse by requiring background checks for Church employees. They now require dioceses faced with an allegation to alert the authorities, conduct an investigation and remove the accused from duty.” (Quotes from Wikipedia.)
The same applies for Canada, which has similar policies in place.
As for repression vs. integration or whatever, that just sounds like Newspeak to me.
Well it’s not. We get professional psychologists to come in and talk to us about this stuff. It’s science. And I can personally attest, and can attest for many other seminarians and priests, that we are not even remotely repressed. I am quite prepared to commit to celibacy, and would very much not want to marry and be a priest (waaay too much work, and the stress of having to devote oneself to both a family and a parish would be unbelievable). There is an incredible freedom that comes from proper sexual integration and self-mastery, and it is possible to do.
Use all the Newspeak that you want, but being taught that your urges and lust are sinful crimes against the Almighty (who has the power to consign you to hell, mind you) is repression. You may be content with it, but you are repressing your desires. And also, the repression in Christianity and Islam, and many other religions too, goes beyond the clergy.
Lust and sexual attraction are not the same. I don’t know if you’ve heard of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, but one of the primary teachings is an affirmation of the inherent goodness of sexual desire, lust being a distortion of this.
I feel immense freedom, not repression, in gaining control over my sexual drive and in not feeling the need to masturbate or have sex. That isn’t to say that I don’t feel sexually attracted to women, but I am able to control those sexual desires. I know from speaking with priests and seminarians that this is their experience as well. If you consider an intense sense of freedom to be repression, then that’s kind of sad for you, but it doesn’t change the reality of my experience.
