Catholic Church in deeep water.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Um... no reform has taken place. They are still protecting members and covering it up, today. Read the article.

An organization with top officials who know about this and do nothing... that's not the same as not being saints. That's patently obvious.

These abuses have been going on for decades, and this is just another example.

How did I know you would knee-jerk react and defend the church? There is no criticism that can be leveled at a religious organization and have it be legitimate to you, is there? It's in black and white.

Damn, dude.

The Catholic Church has a powerful heirarchy which makes it very difficult to report on your superiors. At the same the Roman Church, wrongly, adopted a "don't ask, don't tell, close ranks" attitude to abuses. Part of the problem is inherent in Roman doctrine, which emphasises harsh punishment on the one hand and forgiveness on the other.

So a priest is either let off, or defrocked, excomunicated, banned from communion for life and possibly denied the last rights. The Roman Catholic Church has a policy of trying to get as many souls into heaven as possible. In view of which, they dislike harsh punishments for anything other than heresy; in which they use as harsh a punishement as possible.

You are the one who has had a "knee-jerk" reaction, not me. The "top official" is the Pope, and you have to get past your geographical hierarchy and your Order to get to him. This has been a difficulty for about 500-700 years, and it stems from the creation of the Papal Curia as a monarchial court. The reforms enacted then were in order to allow the Papacy to tighten standards of pastoral care and conduct throughout the Church. Ironically, the measures backfired when it became possible for degenerates to hold Papal Office.

Unfortunately, the "Reformation" failed and this is still the situation we are stuck with.

An appalling case of abuse and complicity.

It does however make me think that if the Church wishes to survive as an institution, it must abolish celibacy, a most unnatural state of affairs, construed by the Church in the early Middle Ages so that it did not have to support priests' wives as well as priests, and which lies at the root of all these crimes.

To be fair, it wasn't about their wives (certainly not in England), it was about them grooming their sons to take over their benefices. The Church was turning into a second feudal aristocracy; and that was seriously damaging clerical standards of behaviour, pastoral care and education.

However, none of these are likely to become issues today.

I would say the best course would be to allow married Deacons to take higher Orders, I don't think priests should really be allowed to have girlfriends and "date". Personally I'm of the belief all priests should be married, as a life partner is an invaluable support in such a vocation; also, it helps to have someone else to run the Parish Bake Sale.

[Askthepizzaguy]

You are the one who has had a "knee-jerk" reaction, not me.

You're half right. When I see horrible systemic abuses of children, my reaction is to condemn.

However, you are being ridiculous if you think your reaction isn't knee-jerk. I cannot find a better term for it. You seem to want to defend the church no matter what its crimes and offer apologist's explanations. The simple solution? Don't be a part of such a corrupt church.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

You're half right. When I see horrible systemic abuses of children, my reaction is to condemn.

However, you are being ridiculous if you think your reaction isn't knee-jerk. I cannot find a better term for it. You seem to want to defend the church no matter what its crimes and offer apologist's explanations. The simple solution? Don't be a part of such a corrupt church.

I don't know how many times I have to explain this, I am an Anglo-Catholic, not a Roman Catholic.

Your solution to a problem which is an old one, and already largely dealt with, was to call for the dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church. That is a knee-jerk reaction, with no thought to the consequences.

The fact is that it would only take about 20 Cardinals, bishops and Chapter heads to cover something like this up, aside from the abusers themselves.

Now, many Catholics have called for reform, but if they shout too loudly they will follow Luthor and argueably do very little good. The Church has been resistant to change for about 500 years, because they believe that changes they make impact on the number of people going to heaven. Heterodoxy can be deemed heresy when it challenges the heirarchy directly, and the problem become still greater when you consider that the Cardinal you are attacking might become Pope.

The Catholic Church is an institution more than 1,700 years old, with more that 1 Billion members, it is the largest religion in the world, and the largest charity. To say, "It has to go" is naive, because it isn't going anywhere.

So, rather than throwing around unrealistic suggestions, why don't you try to think a little more calmly and reasonably.

[Rhyfelwyr]

The "fact" that ordinary Catholics don't care/aren't bothered comes immediately to mind. Really, saying that is practically one step away from blood libel...

Your spelling was bollox

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Since this scandal "broke" a few years ago, and the sadly long history of covering up abuses was exposed, Holy Mother Church -- and particularly the dioceses in the USA -- have gone to significant lengths to adopt the oversight policies and attitudes for which so many of you are calling.

Sadly, as with any large bureaucratic organization, the tendency for issues of concern to be "hushed up" or meaningful reform slowed or neutered by red tape is also present in the Church.


As a conservative, I'd be ecstatic if the level of incisive criticism leveled (with some good reason I admit) at the Catholic Church were aimed at any number of bloated bureacracies that need reform. I can think of a few departments in the USG could do with some heavy pruning -- oh, but that' the government, so we know it is always working for our best interests....


Please, those of you who are on about the married priests thing again, check your reasoning. There is ZERO data indicating that sexual frustration leads to pedophilia. There is, as far as I am aware, not even a correlational connection, much less a causal one. A priest having the chance to get his yaks milked will have no bearing on this issue.

[Askthepizzaguy]

As a conservative, I'd be ecstatic if the level of incisive criticism leveled (with some good reason I admit) at the Catholic Church were aimed at any number of bloated bureacracies that need reform.

Does this mean I have not demonstrated my extreme dislike for the United States government, or any other global organization with extreme levels of corruption, or my distrust of huge organizations to begin with?

I'd better roll up my sleeves. Group mentality and group guilt and the ability of a large group to defend itself very easily from a smaller group allows not only strength in numbers but also allows people to feel secure and safe enough to commit crimes they would never consider doing on their own. I believe there have been a rather large amount of sociological studies which demonstrate how people in groups behave much, much more unethically than lone individuals, even to the point where peer pressure alone can cause people to give answers to simple questions which they know are dead wrong. I wish I had the data in front of me to share, but I just watched one of these studies on an educational channel on TV, and read about such studies constantly in various newspapers and other media. In large groups, people behave badly, and people can be more easily pressured into acting without shame.

Fear not Seamus, I have a great loathing for any large group. In the end, they all ultimately become a bunch of bullies. That is why I am not a member of any group, or if I am (such as this forum) I am a casual member who retains his independence to an annoying and frustrating degree. Groups, to be honest, tend to behave poorly towards anyone not in that group. I hate groups.

[Adrian II]

As a conservative, I'd be ecstatic if the level of incisive criticism leveled (with some good reason I admit) at the Catholic Church were aimed at any number of bloated bureacracies that need reform.

As a closet socialist I whole-heartedly agree. The worst example of child abuse in living memory must be Romania's orphanages, set up by the communist Ceaucescu government. All political or religious denominations and establishments are prone to moral decay if left unchecked. This conclusion does not exonerate the Catholic clergy (in many nations, not just in Ireland), but it puts the whole thing in the proper perspective.

[Askthepizzaguy]

So, rather than throwing around unrealistic suggestions, why don't you try to think a little more calmly and reasonably.

Since the church seems to be able to avoid real legal consequences, the only thing people can realistically do is vote with their feet and leave the church. Maybe then, the loss of money would convince them to toss out the child molesters instead of transferring them. That's a realistic suggestion and guess what? It works, too.

You're talking about one instance where it would take a relatively small amount of people to cover it up, but again this is not an isolated incident. This is not the first abuse case this year. This has been happening for decades, all across the planet. In my own country, we had a vast amount of separate examples of priests abusing and molesting children in the past few years alone.

This is not just a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. This is a widespread, systemic problem which is being, in almost every single case, systematically covered up by the church and the individual criminals in question transferred away to prey on the innocent again.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That's "prey" not "pray".

I don't care which religion a person is, when the knee-jerk reaction is to defend the church and seem to throw up their hands and say "what are you gonna do" I get very concerned. But ultimately I don't need to change your mind, enough people will change their minds on their own, and get disgusted with the church that they will leave it and the loss of a few million or so members will cause even the church of Rome to re-examine its obscene policy of allowing abusers to abuse and then assisting them in avoiding legal action.

And if that is just a pipe dream, then people are willing participants and paying members of a group which is responsible for the organized abuse of countless people, and I am voicing my severe disappointment and disgust, which I'm allowed to do.