I didn’t even realize that anyone considered it to be a disorder rather than just a horrific crime that deserved horrific punishment.
Right, which is why I wonder - IF - it becomes determined that paedophilia is ingrained the way hetero-/homo-sexuality is, how would society react?
It’s a purely hypothetical point. I just ask it because I saw the change from jailing gays and sending them into serious psychological therapy, towards acceptance in marriage, all within my lifespan. I don’t expect the same to happen to pedos, but who knows? I was wrong once about gays.
It is a horrific crime but it is also a disorder. If it were ‘only’ a crime then there wouldn’t be the huge recidivism rates that we see.
When an offender is unable to control his impulses to do something illegal and abhorrent - murder, rape, sexual molestation etc, then that’s a pretty strong indicator that the criminal is suffering from a disorder that needs to be treated because punishment is not a deterrent.
Here’s a thought-provoking letter and response from Dan Savage’s column.
See? Now you’re making sense.
While here (previously):
You didn’t.
By the way, we could of course assert that pedophilia is tied to one’s sexual orientation. The sexual orientation would be minors.
Right. Just like a rapist’s sexual orientation is - rape victims.
That’s perfectly fine. Why would I need to make a distinction between the catholic church and the catholic belief though?
If you belief in catholicism you have to belief in the Vatican.
Dismissing religion is what atheism is about.
That is not an argumentative path I would like to walk.
Ha, I guess I left myself open to that one! To expand/rephrase a bit, a lot of atheists in these sorts of discussions tend to skip to the end and say that since religion is wrong and bad, there is nothing else to discuss. While you may personally believe this, it isn’t a productive way to talk about it and I think it’s still worthwhile to try and understand the intricacies of the various faiths and the people who follow them.
In this case, obviously Catholics don’t want their church letting priests molest people and cover it up, but you’re right when you say belief in the Vatican is a major tenet of the faith. But the church has been reformed before, and will hopefully be reformed again as a result of all this, so blaming the fiasco on the faith itself doesn’t strike me as very constructive. As much as the Vatican itself claims to the ultimate truth of Catholicism or whatever, the truth is a religion is defined by the people who practice it, and there are already self-defined Catholics who operate outside of the church.
You didn’t.
By the way, we could of course assert that pedophilia is tied to one’s sexual orientation. The sexual orientation would be minors.[/QUOTE]
You took my statement out of the context of that entire post. I spent the whole post talking about gay/straight, and as I said, after all that, using “sexuality” as a shorthand for “sexual orientation,” while lazy, should be understandable.
And that assertion of yours only works if we allow for definitions of sexual orientation that fall outside of the gender spectrum. Sexual orientation is about defining what gender(s) the subject is attracted to, not about the details of that attraction.
Uhm, strawman much? All I said was that it makes no sense to distinguish between catholic church and catholic belief.
Regarding the first, unquoted part: I didn’t blame anyone- or thing. Catholics “operating outside the church” obviously know nothing about their branch of christian belief.
Sexual orientation is a social construct used to describe a pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, both genders, neither gender, or another gender.
If you are gonna define a word, Lynch, it might be helpful to use an actual dictionary.
Quick response to this, we believe that the priests and other clergy are the only ones with the authority to administer the sacraments, which are a necessary part of life. You can’t be a practicing Catholic and not receive the basic sacraments so, in that sense, you’re right. However, I don’t know any Catholic who thinks that the people who run the Church are infallible and there is sharp disagreement (even amongst the clergy, ie: my priest favors allowing women to become priests) over many moral, spiritual, and legal issues. Over time, I’m hopeful that the Church will move to a more modern stance on many issues but it will be a hell of a fight and it will be a long time before it happens. In the mean time, I’ve found a parish that suits me and a priest I can talk too openly and receive the sacraments from while shaking my head at many of the bone-headed decisions the Vatican makes.
Yeah. Pure evil.
Is it just me or is do the majority of murder for hire attempts end in a sting operation?
Is it just me or is do the majority of murder for hire attempts end in a sting operation? Good for those neighbors, that’s a crime you should probably report.
I’d imagine that the people who routinely have a need for a contract killer will know a way to reach one reliably. Everyone else is likely to have to start by asking the kind of questions that set off alarm bells in anyone who isn’t actually a professional hitman.
Evil, enabling, hypocritical, lying, sacks of shit.
Kevin Price was struggling with memories of the sexual abuse he says he suffered at the hands of a high school teacher, so he reached out to the religious order that runs the Catholic school he attended.
De La Salle Christian Brothers, which educates more than 1 million students around the world, apologized for Price’s pain and sought to reassure him. The order’s Midwest leader said the brother in question had been forbidden from contact with anyone under 18 and was working in a prison.
But in a 1995 letter obtained by The Associated Press, the leader neglected to mention something: The prison was for males from age 10 to 21. The writer of that letter, Brother Thomas Johnson, is now the second-ranking official in the worldwide order.
The whole article is worthwhile but if don’t want to read the whole thing -
SPOILER ALERT!
Brother Raimond Rose was counseling young inmates at a juvenile detention center in Minnesota. One of the inmates later filed a lawsuit accusing him of molestation. In fact, 21 men have filed lawsuits against Rose in cases dating back to the 1960s. Four of the suits were filed last month.
Worst surprise reveal ever.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0117/1224287680501.html
A 1997 VATICAN directive rejected a recommendation by the Irish Catholic Church that priests who abused children should be reported to the civil authorities, it has emerged.
The disclosure is made in an RTÉ documentary to be broadcast tonight, which also reports that an Irish bishop described the Vatican directive as “a mandate . . . to conceal the reported crimes of a priest”.