I can’t believe I am reading this post! Are you condoning historical physical and sexual abuse?
Who doesn’t? Come on, seriously? I doubt you’ve ever heard of anyone actually condoning sexual abuse. Outside of NAMBLA and such organizations that is. Get real.
Honestly, it is awful that so many children under the duty of care of world wide catholic dioceses have experienced such “endemic" horrific, inhumane abuse - assaults from paedophiles and sadists whom where meant to protect and nurture them.
I disagree. Few abusive clergy were paedophiles, most were ephebophiles, not that that makes it ok, but it is different. Sadism, what a ruler across the knuckles or something? It isn’t like their parents didn’t send them there and couldn’t have taken them out. I know just about every parent would pull their kid out of school if they were being tied up and whipped for hours on end.
Millions of children around the world have endured frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.
This is a calumnious and baseless accusation. I doubt the number would be in the millions for the entire history of the Church. Currently there are 400,000 priests worldwide and possibly double that over the last century. We’ll round up to a million. If 1.5% of those were abusers then 15,000 of them would have been abusers. At 3 victims each on average we reach a number of 45,000. Off the top of my head a reasonable figure for the total number of priests for all time taking into account population figures is about 5 million. If we lower the average abuse rate down to .75% to match a reasonable estimate(as abuse in the 60’s and 70’s was really higher than before or now) we’d have a total of 30,000 more abusers to add to the number already accounted for for a total of 45,000 abusive priests. Again using the number of 3 average victims per priest(as we have no idea what the average abuse rate was in the past per abuser we’ll just have to use that) we can come up with about 150,000 teenagers may have had sexual relations with a priest over the course of the entire history of the Church, according to the probability.
Now I know such extrapolations are hardly foolproof or impeccable, but at least it is something real instead of just something made up out of thin air. My statistics come from the John Jay Study.
I am a firm believer in accountability for ones actions,
me too
resolution through monetary gain only assists one to survive and access professional help.
True, it also goes into a lot of liars pockets. Not even half of those listed on these recent lawsuits are actually victims. They’re in it for the giant payday.
Here are some comments made by those abused in one way or the other:
“In some schools a high level of ritualised beating was routine … Girls were struck with implements designed to maximise pain and were struck on all parts of the body,” the report said. “Personal and family denigration was widespread.”
Says the people trying to get money. Hardly a trustworthy source. If family denigration was occurring wouldn’t the families put their kids in a different school? This makes zero sense.
“The little comfort we have is the knowledge that it vindicated the victims who were raped and sexually abused,”
Very few cases of forcible rape have been discovered. This is emotional hype.
Violation of children’s rights under The Convention on the Rights of the Child
(Covers: civil rights and freedoms, family environment, basic health and welfare, education, leisure and cultural activities and special protection measures.)
These children and adults have been damaged beyond reconcilable - their trust in others destroyed, their ability to live a fulfilled lives gone. Dreams shattered. Up-mostly their spiritual grounding destroyed .
Certainly you’ll get no argument from me that sexual abuse is damaging to children. We agree on most of this stuff, I just don’t think you should be posting fallacious and damaging information about priests like this. They deserve our respect, it isn’t optional. Sexual offenders should be dealt with, no doubt, but that doesn’t warrant calumniating the innocent nor the entire body of priests worldwide or for all time. Your treatment of this issue is not grounded in facts but in emotionalism. I can respect you for having strong feelings about this, just try to be more accurate.
