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Marfran
Guest
Yes, it IS a lesson for ALL. We still get mud in the eye though.
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Y
yankee_doodle
Guest
like Manichean dualism?
J
josie_L
Guest
Meaning we have free will, and sometimes we are tempted by evil.
Y
yankee_doodle
Guest
well, that seems like a whitewash to me. Are you really saying that 4-8% of all adult males in the United States are pedophiles or homosexual child rapists?
Obviously the percentage among the population at large is a fraction of one percent (or else we would have an epidemic of child rape). So in reality a priest is probably ten or twenty times more likely than the average guy to commit this heinous act.
If you don’t view this as uniquely a Catholic problem … then I don’t know what to say.
R
Ronsatron
Guest
Hi Josie,
I don’t think you will get any argument that child abuse happens in all walks of life, but there is a difference. If it happens in a school for example, that teacher is not then moved to a different school to continue abusing children. That teacher is not defended by other teachers or parents by claiming he is not a paedophile, but is homosexual. Those priests were paedophiles no matter what kind of spin is attempted.
I don’t see how there can be any defense of this? Of course it is not typical of the priesthood, but the CC is also guilty and responsible for alot of abuse because they did not act. The good thing (if there is a bright side to matters like this) is that in future if paedophile priests are caught, they will be dealt with the same way a paedophile teacher would be-by being sent to prison.
J
josie_L
Guest
Where are you getting your information from, and I have already delineated that the majority of the cases were ephebophilia (which is a lot more common within society at large)?
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yankee_doodle
Guest
hopefully, people are now smart enough not to leave their kids alone with a priest (I would never allow my kid to be alone with a Catholic priest knowing there’s almost a 10% chance that man is a pedophile). I think people who do are almost as crazy as those people who refuse modern medicine because of their religion. Crazy world we live in?
C
Corki
Guest
This is not a defense of the Church but you are mixing your tenses. The Church may have transeferred priests in the past, usually on the advise of psychologists treating the priest, BTW. It is not a case of “not acting” but of not acting 50 years ago with 21st century psychological information. It is not happening now. The same thing can be said for schools. As late as the mid 90s, schools honored contracts with teachers unions that prohibitted them from disclosing the reason a teacher was fired. These teachers moved from school to school, with the cooperation of the administrators.
In both cases, preists and teachers, when there is evidence to bring charges, the offenders go off to prison. The “trouble” cases are those with accusations, even well founded ones, but no charges.
And with teachers, they are always “reclassifying” the accusations as statutory rape rather than pedophilia and even the media joins in.
But what does this have to do with atheism?
J
josie_L
Guest
The nature of the abuse is important to understand so we can prevent this from happening again, and as it is the majority of cases (80%) were homosexual priests sexually preying on post pubescent boys.
J
josie_L
Guest
I would not leave my kid with any grown up I didn’t absolutely trust (and I can tell you there are not many).
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yankee_doodle
Guest
I don’t really feel like discussing this anymore. It’s disgusting & IMO anyone who acts as an apologist for their church in such an affair is both an enabler and shares some culpability.
It’s sort of like when a Taliban murderer is given refuge among Pakistani villagers. Sure you don’t want to kill innocents, but are they really innocent? After all without their assistance the Taliban murderer wouldn’t be able to operate. Indeed the Taliban gets all their recruits from such villages. So arguably, why not bomb the whole village?
So you ask why do some people have a bone to pick with the religious? Your support for your church enables this criminal activity (and their arrogant feeling that they’re above the law). Therefore, you’re not an innocent in this affair, just like the Pakistani villager providing assistance to the Taliban killer.
This is how I feel, therefore I will abstain from discussing this issue further (because it really, really ticks me off).
R
Ronsatron
Guest
It makes no difference if the majority were homosexual or not, it is paedophillia. Are you willing to admit that those who sexually abused boys (post pubescent does not make it any less of a crime) were paedophiles? I am struggling to see how it can be anything esle?
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buffalo
Guest
To get the facts on how and what they did or di not act on read the John Jay Study. You will soon see the media bias and you should be angry that they are not telling the whole truth.
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buffalo
Guest
Somewhere around 50% are admitted homosexuals. That is a far greater risk for more than one reason, physically as well as mentally and spiritually.
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yankee_doodle
Guest
I assume you mean 50% of those priests were admitted homosexuals. I’m sure that’s true, but still, I’m a heterosexual male (in my prime) and I’ve never had sex with (much less forced myself on) an underage girl. Most adult homosexuals only have relationships with other consenting adult homosexuals. So who cares what their sexual preference was? They’re the worse sort of criminals who need to be locked up.
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buffalo
Guest
Look up the definitions in the dictionary. In any case none of this is right. The issue is when trying to focus on a solution it is essential you understand the root problem.
J
josie_L
Guest
In 1999, the McCreary Adolescent Health Survey II* found that:
35% of girls and 16% of boys between grades 7 - 12 had been sexually and/or physically abused
Among girls surveyed, 17-year-olds experienced the highest rate of sexual abuse at 20%
In their 2001 report on Family Violence in Canada**, The Canadian Centre for Justice
Statistics found that children who are exposed to physical violence in their homes are:
more than twice as likely to be physically aggressive as those who have not had such exposure;
more likely to commit delinquent acts against property
more likely to display emotional disorders and hyperactivity
University of Victoria’s Sexual Assault Centre*** posts the following childhood sexual abuse statistics:
1 in 3 females and 1 in 6 males in Canada experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18.
**80% of all child abusers are the father, foster father, stepfather or another relative or close family friend of the victim. **
Incestuous relationships last 7 years on average
75% of mothers are not aware of the incest in their family
60-80% of offenders in a study of imprisoned rapists had been molested as children
80% of prostitutes and juvenile delinquents, in another study, were sexually abused as children.
safekidsbc.ca/statistics.htm
p.s. These statistics are Canadian, I will find you American statistics as well.
J
josie_L
Guest
It is necessary to know that they were homosexual in nature and preying on post pubescent boys because we need to understand the nature of the disorder and how to deal with it, the Church from my understanding is now in the process of screening potential priests before they can enter seminary.
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yankee_doodle
Guest
guess who most of these deviant perverts are? You guessed it … the religious. You’ll find an amazing absence of non-theists in those type of statistics, why? Because our brains work properly
Maybe some people need to fear the wrath of some god (even if fictitious) to control their deviant disposition. I guess Nietzsche was right, being an atheist isn’t for everyone.
K
KindredSoul
Guest
The Hindu religion has been around for thousands of years, in some shape or form at least about as long as the Egyptian religion would be if it still existed.
The Christian/Catholic religion, which is viewed to be a fulfillment (from your secular point of view “innovation”) of Judaism, can in that sense claim as a conceivable world view to be as old as Judaism itself, which again has been around for (arguably) longer than the Egyptian religion, even if the Egyptian religion survived today.
Even non-Christian Judaism, which has never been adhered to by more than barely 1% of the world, shows a great tenacity for holding on for as long as recorded human history allows us to reliably recall, as it would seem due to their oral culture that the beliefs were around for centuries before the earliest paper trail records can show. It is hard to tell how long people believed in the Judeo-Christian God, since the Hebrew Scriptures themselves speak of an age that would have preceded Abraham (the beginning of organized Judaism) in which there was no organized religion built around God, but during which belief in Him still survived on a person to person level. This potentially gives belief in the Judeo-Christian God an unimaginable antiquity, one that arguably stretches back as far as it can be argued that Atheists/Agnostics have existed. As cited above, Catholicism claims to be a continuation and development of the belief in that God, thus as a potential reality inherits whatever potential longevity that belief has.
It seems that the Egyptian religion and its death were the exception to the rule when compared to other comparably influential religions, not the rule itself. It seems Catholicism has a good chance of being around for as long as humanity dwells in the present universe, just as I–though I’m not Hindu or Jewish–believe the same of Judaism and Buddhism, as there is no evidence that major, or even well grounded, religions pass away eventually as some sort of reliable and observable rule. Even some of the New Age religions, having only risen in the last few centuries, might conceivably last for hundreds of thousands of years, or until the end of humanity’s current existence, if they become popular enough or have even small groups of people committed to them.
Granted, this nigh-guaranteed longevity in itself doesn’t prove a religion (I have cited others that have had such longevity) but it does mean that Atheism as a world view is no more historically consistent, constant, universal, ancient or historically likely to survive than Catholicism (at least when seen as a continuation of Judaism’s world view) or any other existing belief. As long as there are Atheists or Agnostics, I assure you, there will be Catholics carrying on in the Faith; for people who believe in and singularly worship the Judeo-Christian God have arguably been around for as long as people who disbelieve in or doubt the existence of any god at all.
Hopefully, people are smart enough not to leave their kids alone with anyone they don’t know very well, and hopefully they are smart enough to know that, even then, there is a significant chance that that person will molest their child when one takes into account the average number of pedophiles out there in the world, priest or not, who molested the children of people who had reason to trust them. A large percentage of biological fathers have been pedophiles. I suppose any mother who would leave her children with their father alone is “almost as crazy as those people who refuse modern medicine because of their religion.” Goodness, if your own brother, or close friends, happen to be biological fathers to anyone, it means you’ve a duty to not only keep your child away from them but the duty to do so out of the fear that these people you’ve known well are pedophiles. Paranoia might indeed save a child from being molested, but the only way it will do so absolutely is if it is applied across the board, and not only or even specially to Catholic priests. Unless you assert that the parents of a child who was molested by a priest were asking for it, but conveniently the parents of a child who was molested by a teacher, brother, best friend, etc., were not. You do not assume that someone is more likely to be a child molester simply because they have some completely unrelated trait in common with known child molesters. If you do, you’ll have to assume it of nigh everyone.
I agree that children must not be left alone with anyone who might be a predator…but priests are not the only people capable of being predators, nor are they anymore likely to be than people from other walks of life, especially now that this scandal is out in the open and the Church is (rightly, I agree) being forced to deal with it firmly, while other walks of life are now much easier places for pedophiles to hide, as they are not as much in the public eye. Pedophiles hide, in short, where ever they are least suspected. That’s what they do in order to get victims. Not too long ago, that least suspected place was the priesthood. Now? I’d say the priesthood is the last place a pedophile with two braincells would think would be a good hiding place. All eyes are on you and people think you have a 10% chance of molesting children because you’re a priest? Baaad hiding place. These men are twisted, and sick, but they are most certainly not stupid…they cleverly plot and plan to get to positions where they can get victims with the least likely chance of being suspected, and as I said the priesthood is now the least convenient place for that.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
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