Right–I mean, look at the U.S. --a great country, truly, and the abuse there wasn’t ‘just’ in the more liberal-leaning ‘East and Left Coasts’. . .there was abuse in the ‘conservative heartland’ as well.
I don’t know. Was part of it related to the entire 20th century in which all aspects of society had violent upheavals. . .from great scientific advances (automobiles, planes), to a great world War (I), to huge materalistic gains and concomitant ‘freedoms’ demanded --women’s votes, the push for contraception, union rises – in the 1920s, the huge depression world wide and subsequent militarizations in Germany and Japan in the 1930s, the second great war of the 1940s, the turmoils of ‘colonization’ and the attempts to impose peace and prosperity along with marches of communism and socialism in the 1950s, the civil rights movement and the rise of radical feminism in the 1960s, the pursuit of ‘me-ness’ in the 1970s, the rampant consumerism of the 1980s, the attempts at ‘cocooning’ and both an extreme ‘back to values’ on the part of some and an extreme ‘jettison of values’ on others, and finally the shadow of 9/11 and its global aftermath coloring the first decade of the 2000s,. . .and that is only a tiny example of the ‘changes’ that occurred during the lives of those pedophile priests which may have had some kind of influence on why they did what they did.
I do hope that legal charges will be made and that appropriate actions including above all penance and restitution are made. . .but I also refuse to let the actions of any, some, or even many men, even priests, override the actual teachings of the Catholic Church.
That some members of the Church abused their Catholic faith and DEFIED their Catholic teachings is tragic and hurtful to all.
What’s most hurtful is that some will be unable to separate an individual pedophile priest, or even a group of them, who by their actions have actually DENIED AND DEFIED THE CHURCH. . .and these people will somehow feel that these priests’ actions are not only a stain on the Church but that the fact that they did this disproves the ‘Christianity’ of the Catholic Church, and/or demonstrates that the Church is actually evil because ‘its members are evil.’ We can try to demonstrate the falsity of those ideas but when a lot of members of mass media are themselves victims of such faulty thinking and presenting it as ‘fact’ it is quite difficult to keep on calmly presenting the truth --because it looks as though we are trying to ‘defend’ or ‘coverup’ ourselves.
We aren’t. Nobody argues that great evil was NOT done by some. Nobody is trying to downplay it. What we are trying to do is to make sure that ONLY WHAT IS ACTUALLY WRONG is being addressed.
Suppose a man went out and robbed another man of $500, and was caught and tried.
At the trial, he was accused not only of robbing the man of $500 but also of raping his wife (a deed of which he was NOT guilty).
And at the trial, the actual offense of robbery was almost not addressed at all, while the prosecuting attorney ratcheted up the rape charge.
**And the man (admittedly guilty of a crime of robbery) kept trying to say that he was not guilty of rape, and kept getting shot down by the courts and by the media covering, with continual screams of 'This RAPIST". **
That would be pretty awful, right? It’s bad enough to be guilty of a sin, and hopefully people would ‘pay for it’ appropriately. But to be NOT guilty of something and be pilloried for it. . .and to have perhaps generations be ‘taught’ lies about the whole subject. . .that’s a pretty rotten thing for any person. . .let alone 1 billion Catholic people who are in the end being accused of crimes which THEY ARE NOT GUILTY OF.
**If those priests are guilty, and they mostly admit they are, certainly they need to pay for their crimes. But don’t pillory the whole Church as being ‘guilty’ when it is not. That’s all. **
:nope: 
:banghead: