How low can the Anglicans go? Desmond Tutu this time.

[AllSaints1631]

Well, yes and no.

With the Catholic Church you know who’s wayward and who’s not because there is one, definite, and unchanging Truth by which to measure it.

With the Anglican Church/Episcopal Church there can be a multitude of teachings within the one “communion” even if those are diametrically opposed to each other-- all for the sake of preserving the “communion”. So, can one actually say that Tutu is “wayward”? No, because the AC/EC lacks a supreme authority and refuses to uphold one, unchanging Truth.

This is what happens when one lifts anchor and sails away from Rome.

Aww, get off of the Anglicans already. They have alot to deal with agreed, but one of their problems isn’t a billion plus dollar lost litigation because it covered up known child sexual abuse for decades.

 

[Metaron]

Aww, get off of the Anglicans already. They have alot to deal with agreed, but one of their problems isn’t a billion plus dollar lost litigation because it covered up known child sexual abuse for decades.

Yeah, like the Southern Baptist Convention did with some of it’s ministers…

 

[AllSaints1631]

Yeah, like the Southern Baptist Convention did with some of it’s ministers…

when did that happen?? I have personally never heard of it.

 

[Metaron]

when did that happen?? I have personally never heard of it.

Huh? Here:

And so here it is – in the form of hundreds of young women and men coming forward to tell their stories to judges and juries, exposing a decades-long pattern of unchecked predatory behavior on the part of their Baptist pastors. This parade, too, has gone on nearly non-stop and just as fast for nearly a year now – so where are the reporters, the cameras, the headlines?

A few national papers have picked up on this, as has ABC’s 20/20 (which did a report in April). Among bloggers, the perspicacious Pam Spaulding has been on the case. But mostly, the coverage has been confined to the local papers – each one treating its own hometown pastor scandal as an isolated incident, without putting it in the context of a larger national trend. As long as the dots aren’t being connected, this isn’t getting anything like the 24/7/365 coverage that the Catholic scandal did.

We have to wonder: why did the Catholic Church get the full media treatment – but all we hear about this still-exploding scandal is the sound of crickets chirping?

Former Southern Baptist Pastor Charged with Rape, Sexual Battery of Teenage Boy

Bob Allen
10-17-07 EthicsDaily.com
A former Southern Baptist pastor in Cordova, Tenn., has been indicted on charges of rape and sexual battery by an authority figure involving a teenage boy.

Last week a grand jury handed down criminal indictments against Steven Haney, former pastor of Walnut Grove Baptist Church in suburban Memphis. Haney, 47, was arrested July 12 after a man, who is now 21, said his former pastor molested him over a five-year period beginning when he was 15.

In a preliminary hearing in August, the alleged victim said Haney seduced him into a long-term sexual relationship by telling him it was a test of his faith in God.

If convicted of rape, Haney could face eight to 12 years in prison. He also faces three counts of sexual battery by an authority figure, a felony punishable by three to six years in jail. As of now, Haney is free on $25,000 bond.

Haney was pastor of Walnut Grove Baptist Church for 20 years before resigning last December. After his arrest, former church members said about 30 families left the congregation after similar accusations involving Haney surfaced in the 1990s.

Police said in July they were interviewing as many as 10 people who said they had dealings with Haney in the past to see if there might be additional victims.

In June an Oklahoma pastor made a motion requesting the SBC Executive Committee to conduct a feasibility study “concerning the development of a database of Southern Baptist clergy and staff who have been credibly accused of, personally confessed to, or legally been convicted of sexual harassment or abuse, and that such a database be accessible to Southern Baptist churches in order to assist in preventing any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

… They say a greater problem, however, is a code of silence that–instead of exposing predators–allows them to move on quietly, often to another church, while pressuring victims to keep quiet for the “good of the church.”

Newspapers recently reported the arrest of a former independent Baptist pastor in Florida accused of molesting girls in North Carolina 30 years earlier.

The Fayetteville Observer reported Oct. 9 that Anthony Phillips Denton, 57, was charged with 16 counts of taking indecent liberties with children between 1977 and 1981, while employed as a music minister at Berean Baptist Church.

Local media carried reports that church leaders knew Gray was a pedophile but covered it up. One alleged former victim of Denton, Boys said, contacted Trinity’s current pastor to warn him about sexual crimes and was told she needed to get counseling.

Neither Trinity Baptist nor Berean Baptist churches are affiliated with the SBC, but allegations of sexual abuse by Gray date as far back as 1949, when he was a young assistant pastor at a Southern Baptist church in Hampton, Fla.

Trinity is also part of the Southwide Baptist Fellowship, a group of independent Baptists that has made overtures to a Southern Baptist Convention they now see as purified by the so-called “conservative resurgence” of the 1980.

Past SBC President Jerry Vines spoke favorably of Trinity Baptist Church at a conference in 2006, reportedly without mentioning the pedophilia scandal. (In 2002 Vines famously called the Muslim Prophet Muhammad a “demon-possessed pedophile.”)

At the same conference the late Jerry Falwell addressed the accusations of molestation and rape of numerous children against the former pastor, describing it as a “bump in the road.”

It’s a societal problem, not a Catholic one.

 

[Hijikata]

when did that happen?? I have personally never heard of it.

So because you never heard of it, it never happens right? You never answered the question about if you left the church because of the sex abuse scandals. Like Manny pointed out, the Church has actually grown since then and it helped clean up the seminaries. What some of the Catholic hierarchy did was horrible behavior, but you don’t label the whole group because of that.

I get so tired of hearing jokes mentioned whenever I tell someone that I was an Alter Boy or how that every priest somehow wants to do horrible things. Just because a SMALL minority of priests did such things does NOT mean you can label the whole Church.

 

[AllSaints1631]

So because you never heard of it, it never happens right? You never answered the question about if you left the church because of the sex abuse scandals. Like Manny pointed out, the Church has actually grown since then and it helped clean up the seminaries. What some of the Catholic hierarchy did was horrible behavior, but you don’t label the whole group because of that.

I get so tired of hearing jokes mentioned whenever I tell someone that I was an Alter Boy or how that every priest somehow wants to do horrible things. Just because a SMALL minority of priests did such things does NOT mean you can label the whole Church.

You need not rant at me. I said that I never heard the story not that it didn’t exist ok. As far as your claims of the Catholic church growing I would surely like to see proof. Truth is, it is losing parishioners quite steadily especially in Central America. I seriously doubt the Catholic figures of their membership on the basis of many things.