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Catholic Church Sex Scandal Returns: nuns.
- Thread starter Autodidact
- Start date
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
That's just wicked.
Rainbow Mage
Lib Democrat/Agnostic/Epicurean-ish/Buddhist-ish
Well Auto what do you expect in an organization that requires it's clearly to suppress a basic human instinct? I've been saying for years that celibacy warps those Priests' brains.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
What do they expect when they dress and act so slutty.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Auto, you do seem to have a thing for the Catholics! I was a Catholic as a small boy and an altar boy and all the priests I was involved with were great guys. I was an atheist by ten but they were always happy to argue on a level that I could understand
and I always appreciated that, it was never an issue and neither was buggery. The majority of these priests ended up running off with a local woman (including the Bishop who had a secret family, big news here at the time!). Maybe they were a bit more easy going because they were getting a bit. I might be rambling but my point is; is this down to religion or people. All large organisations are going to have diversity in their ranks. Are the perverts Catholic or are they just perverts? Are priests abusing nuns by Papal or divine direction? I cannot defend the Catholic Church, the list is too long and never ends and it should have crashed and burned centuries ago but I don't think that priests who abuse nuns or boys see their actions as a Catholic or God driven vocation and as such are not exclusive to a particular organisation. The bottom line is: as an atheist, what's your point?
I really wanted to go there but thought that I might be the only one.....
Gunfingers
Happiness Incarnate
I always wondered, is there actually a higher incidence of sexual abuse among the clergy than the general populace? Because without that we can't really establish that their behavior is caused by vows of celibacy.
"In one case in which an African sister was forced to have an abortion, she died during the operation and her aggressor led the funeral mass."
wow, how i'd love to have a few hours alone with this guy and a claw hammer.
wow, how i'd love to have a few hours alone with this guy and a claw hammer.
Good for you.
Since I got married, the church where I got married (my wife is Catholic) has had one former priest arrested on sexual abuse charges and another one named in a civil lawsuit.
Even if the data showed a higher rate of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, it'd be hard to draw a causal link back to celibacy, since the sexual predators in the general population don't have the benefit of an organization that covers up their crimes and shuffles them around to new locations with new victims. That probably skews the data.
What do you expect from an organisation that produced the Borgias
Rainbow Mage
Lib Democrat/Agnostic/Epicurean-ish/Buddhist-ish
Well I know that the male body releases certain hormones when a male has a "release", and that if these hormones aren't released they cause males to get irratable and grudgy. That's just short term. I theorize that longer term abstinance can cause longer term side effects.
But if the criticism is based on the bad that happens can they not defend that by the good that they might do. It must be a two way street if that is the criteria. And to say that large organisations do not ignore or cover up sexual predation, at least at high level, is just head in the sand. Are Catholic clergy more prone than the general population to sexual abuse because of their religion? I doubt it very much, how are they different from their flock? They are not celibate. Are Catholic clergy less likely to be prosecuted...undoubtedly. I do not understand the Churches attitude to these problems. If the Church cast each perpetrator to the wolves then they could take the high ground but they don't. Or at least did not, I think they will now (at least in litigious societies) but that is mainly because they have been caught, not because they think it's right. I'd be very surprised if the Catholic Church is in control of much of it's empire but a pervert is an individual and as such should not be in a position to bring it down unless they support him.
I can't speak for Auto, but for me the problem is three fold. First, is of course the fact that this sort of crap is happening at all. Second, is the apparent (given recent news stories regarding direction by the vatican to the Irish bishopric re: reporting pedophile priests, and similar stories coming out of LA and Philadelphia) institutional coverup and outright collusion in sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy. Third, is the insistence by vatican leadership that I am "intrinsically disordered" simply because my sexual orientation doesn't lead me to father children for RCC priests to ****. That is why I personally have little to no sympathy for the plight of the RCC and why I will make sure that everyone I know is aware of the latest scandal involving RCC clergy (and to a slightly lesser extent clergy of any denomination not fully supportive of my civil rights as a gay man). I will also continue to personally feel (but not as strongly advocate) that the behavior of the RCC hierarchy in covering up for, transferring, and outright abetting the rape of children by its priesthood nullifies any good that the RCC could possibly accomplish.
That's why nuns usually travel in pairs.
The 1st nun makes sure the 2nd nun don't git none.
The 1st nun makes sure the 2nd nun don't git none.
The_Evelyonian
Old-School Member
Can't say I'm surprised.
The_Evelyonian
Old-School Member
Seems to be old news. That story was posted almost ten years ago.
On this issue, they can only justify the bad with the good if they somehow need to shelter predators in order to do charity. They don't.
I'm certain that sexual predation happens in other organizations. The difference between them and the Catholic Church, apparently, is that when it comes to light in other organizations, the conspirators and higher-ups who enabled the crimes go to jail.
Probably not individually, but still, all indications are that this problem within the Catholic Church is something that's on an unprecedented scale. The Church's sheer size, along with the societal regard given to clergy and Church leaders' own culpable actions in covering up the crimes of priests all worked together to create a problem of gigantic proportions.
It seems to me that they're now willing to give up the individual predators, but they've still got their protective shield around the bishops and cardinals who enabled and abetted those predators with their cover-ups and inter-parish shuffling.
The Vatican is very much in charge of things like its letter to the bishops of Ireland telling them not to report abusive priests to secular authorities.