Abuse in Ireland....Why is Punishment typically utilized to teach our catholic christian faith?

[cknick]

I hope you’re not suggesting that other denominations are spotless.

And I’m surprised that no one else takes issue with the wording of the thread’s title. Or don’t words and meaning count any more?

I asked for your opinion as to a different title, and you haven’t responded.

Secondly, Punishment has typically been utilized historically in our faith. Perhaps others recognize this more clearly than you do??
Obviously correction is the goal. However there are other ways to get to the goal. Punishment (corporal, temporal, etc) and through positive rewards and reinforcement. Why isn’t the latter used more frequently?

 

[Love_is_Patient]

I asked for your opinion as to a different title, and you haven’t responded.

Secondly, Punishment has typically been utilized historically in our faith. Perhaps others recognize this more clearly than you do??
Obviously correction is the goal. However there are other ways to get to the goal. Punishment (corporal, temporal, etc) and through positive rewards and reinforcement. Why isn’t the latter used more frequently?

Punishment has typically been utilized historically in the history of the human race, beginning with the fall of Adam and Eve. I think you’re going to have a really, really tough time calling it a Catholic issue. Let’s face it, people learn from negative consequences.

Note: **NOT IN ANY WAY CONDONING ABUSE. **

Furthermore, how do you know how often positive rewards and reinforcement are or aren’t used among the approximately 1 billion Catholics currently alive? You’re way over-generalizing.

Love is Patient

 

[St_Francis]

The title of this thread confuses things, SK is right about that.

Abuse is different from punishment. And punishment is not used to teach our Faith.

What happened in Ireland was that *in some institutions *abuse occurred. And in other institutions, conditions were not ideal. Neither of these situations were used to “teach the Faith.”

Now, most children need to be punished at some times in their lives. This is because children act in different ways to find out where the boundaries of good behavior are. They are allowed to shout when playing outside: are they allowed to shout inside? They are praised for talking at home; why not talk at Mass? Etc. And children will not quit without some sort of definite negative consequence, which can be anything from a stern look to a swat on the bottom, and some children definitely need the latter!

The situation in an institution is difficult. When I hear about institutions which can use more positive methods of discipline, they are usually the ones where the children can be kicked out if they are too disruptive. What happens in institutions from which children/teens cannot be expelled? Either no attempt is made to discipline, as is the case in all too many of our public schools, or too much effort is made, as used to be the case, from our point of view *now, *in most institutions for children (including public schools and institutions run by all sorts of other people).

If you have a person who is a through-going bully or has some other mental perversion in one of these institutions, you get abuse. And since abusers try to get into situations where they carry out their abuse, you see them gravitating toward institutions like this (and schools in general, and foster parenting, etc).

Anyway, we shouldn’t let the fact that some people used the institution for their own self-aggrandizement keep us from noticing that the Church was doing something charitable which was misused by horrible people.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

I asked for your opinion as to a different title, and you haven’t responded.

Secondly, Punishment has typically been utilized historically in our faith. Perhaps others recognize this more clearly than you do??
Obviously correction is the goal. However there are other ways to get to the goal. Punishment (corporal, temporal, etc) and through positive rewards and reinforcement. Why isn’t the latter used more frequently?

No, what I take issue with is the concept that punishment itself is somehow ‘wrong.’

 

[cassini]

After reading the inquiry of thousands of abuse cases in Ireland, and actually reallzing that our Sisters at our Parish belong to one of the orders under investigation, it is making me question my faith. Is there a prevalence to utilize temporal, corporal, and sexual punishment because many people believe that through suffering, it will help others get to heaven? Or do most people believe that it is a dysfunctional behavior in which peole have difficulty controlling their anger and impulses?

Do you think that the religious justify their behavior by thinking that God wants them to do this?

It is heart wrenching and I’d like to know why these types of behaviors occur moreso in our Catholic faith. Any ideas?

As I am Irish perhaps what I say may be of help in understanding the horrific abuse that the Ryan report has disclosed. First of all it was the State that put these children into the care of religious orders for many reasons, sometimes for trivial things. Stories of screaming children being taken from their hysterical parents in court simply for playing football in the streets (loitering) are being aired on radio.
Now the 1940s-70s was a time when corporal punishment was normal, in the family, in the schools and in institutions.
The litany of abuses covers every sphere you can think of, from beatings, psychological attack to sexual abuse.
Be aware that in those days the Irish had big families and the religious orders were seen as a place to have a son or a daughter. They were also one of the places where secure ‘employment’ was available. Accordingly MOST were not vocations from men and women willing to live celibate lives. Thus sexual frustration was a result of this. Homosexuality was also a cause, for the religious orders were seen as a life of opportunity for such people.
.
Not once did I hear of a story of punishment being given in the cause of the teaching of the faith and we have heard dozens of them. The only one aired was of a little girl thrown off a balcony for eating a sweet given to her by her mother before receiving on the day of her holy Communion

On the general question of punishment, well there cannot be law without sanction. Millions were slapped, some brutally (me) by their father or mother in order to teach one how to behave. It worked, for most of us turned out to be good Catholics in every way. The same applies to God’s laws. He has set down a punishment in order to teach us that His laws are meaningful and for the good of society and the individual,

Thousands of others went through these same institutions without suffering ‘abuse’. As regards those who shielded these perverts in order to protect the ‘good name of the Church’, they were misguided and wrong. At the time though, they chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils.The Irish are in shock at the stories coming out. Many have already committed suicide because no one would listen to them or believe them.

One thing is certain. The Catholic Church exists on earth as the antithesis to such behaviour. Its commandments explicitely forbid such behavour under the threat of eternal hell for those who break these commandments with impunity. Thus the Catholic faith cannot be blamed for the acts of its members. Naturally anti-Catholics will use these scandals to try to undermine the faith and already they are trying to remove the religious from Schools and hospitals today.

 

[Don_Schneider]

Dear Cassini:

“One thing is certain. The Catholic Church exists on earth as the antithesis to such behavior. Its commandments explicitely forbid such behavour under the threat of eternal hell for those who break these commandments with impunity. Thus the Catholic faith cannot be blamed for the acts of its members. Naturally anti-Catholics will use these scandals to try to undermine the faith and already they are trying to remove the religious from Schools and hospitals today.”

Yes, that’s very perceptive and wise on your part. One must separate the belief system from the believers, as a friend pointed out to me. In a religion as vast as ours, it is inevitable that some will stray from the truth of the faith. Because we are so vast, those numbers will seem inordinately large as an absolute number. Our enemies will attempt to capitalize on the tragic situation in order to advance their cause of secular humanism. We have seen where such has led already; the profound damage it has inflicted upon society in the form of family breakdown, the cornerstone of civilization.

This is not to minimize the pain of those who unjustly suffered at the hands of those who, in His name, crucified our Lord twice. I can think of no greater pain for Christ to bear than to look down at the persecution of children by those who claim to be in His service.

We must learn from our mistakes and begin anew.
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