You’re just assuming that way more people did than you have evidence of.
When you look at that link posted by HumanTon, it’s showing studies suggesting that the level of sexual abuse is below that of the general adult population (which itself is higher than I would have thought).
Again, you’re condemning literally millions of people.
This is a serious question here: Have you ever been to a catholic church, and spoken with priests? I’m trying to gauge what kind of real world experience you have with the church.
Well I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school all through high school, had a priest as a family friend (that was later outed for covering up sexual abuse) and have a couple priests in the family (though didn’t know them very well), so yes, I’m pretty familiar with the church as a whole.
And it absolutely disgusts me that the Church covered all of this up for years. I obviously have no way of providing evidence that the abuse extends past what has already been uncovered (which is extensive and disturbing to say the least.) Other than just common sense - the Church actively concealed this for decades and it only began coming into the open less than 20 years ago. Is it more likely that we’ve uncovered every single case or that there are hundreds or thousands more that have been successfully covered up to this point?
The Church as a whole is corrupt and willfully concealed this for years. That in no way condemns regular every day Catholics. Only the vast network that successfully hid the sexual abuse for decades. I honestly can’t understand why anyone would give the Church the benefit of the doubt here, given how utterly horrific the crimes are and how willingly they covered them up.
As an ex-Catholic, this shit factored heavily into my stepping away from the faith well before I accepted that I was an atheist at heart and by obvious fact.
The Church–or, if it makes Timex happier, very large and organized factions within it–as an organization had a strong role in covering up the disgustingly numerous cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by its clergy.
Much like we condemn police for outright murder in a more strong and vociferous manner than murder in general precisely because they are charged with protecting us and are granted significant leeway in the judicious application of lethal force as a tool in that protective capacity, I absolutely hold religious ministers to a higher standard of care for and respect for the public than I do any other rando off the street. Pedophile priests were trusted at a much higher level than regular abusers, and were granted a much higher degree of leeway as a result. That the church then took severe pains to shuffle them around and sweep the accusations under the rug further enabled them to continue their abuse with wild abandon.
So you’ve known a ton of folks in the catholic church, and presumably most of them were reasonably good people, right? I mean, you’ve got the one guy who participated in covering up sexual abuse, but that’s out of, what, a hundred folks working for the church that you knew throughout school?
And it should. In a lot of ways, it’s an exceptional betrayal of trust, just like when a cop commits crimes. These guys are supposed to be an rock of ethics and morality upon communities build their lives. So when they fall short, especially in such an abhorrent manner, it’s especially shocking.
But still, the vast, vast majority of those people working for the Church are not committing abuse, or covering it up. Most priests aren’t abusing their parishoners, or covering up for other priests who do.
Pope Francis has been working to admit to these mistakes made by the church, and reform it. And the Church elected him as Pope. That itself, to me at least, suggests that the Church is not inherently evil as an organization. Because if it were, it would not have elected someone like Francis.
I mean there are lots of other reasons to consider the Church an evil body. Leveraging their enormous moral influence to discourage condom use in AIDS-ravaged Africa, cutting funds to immigrant rights groups because they associated too closely with LGBT rights advocacy groups, inspiring Dan Brown to write his shitty novels. . .
A few hundred is lowballing it. Look at the link. By the Church’s own estimate 1.5% to 5% of its priests engage/d in sexual abuse (actually, “were involved in sexual abuse cases” - which means they’re not trying to estimate how many weren’t caught.)
Using those numbers and your estimate of half a million priests in the Church, that’s 7500 to 25000 priests.
But that’s beside the point. For an organization to qualify as evil it’s not necessary for every, or even most, of its employees to commit evil acts, only for the people controlling the organization to continually engage in evil acts.
Those studies cited were conducted by the Church to bolster their legal defenses, so take them with a grain of salt. But concentrating on the exact percentage of abusers is missing the main point: the evil wasn’t restricted to the abuse. The evil also consisted of the Church as an organization protecting the abusers, covering up the abuse, and re-assigning the abusers to positions where they could, and did, abuse again.
The Church did this again and again and again.
In country after country after country.
For decade after decade after decade.
It’s undeniable at this point that the Church as an organization had and implemented some policies that can only be described as evil. You can debate whether that makes them evil, pure evil, or only partly evil. But you can’t deny that the evil in the organization exists just because most priests aren’t criminals. (Which is an astonishingly low bar, by the way.)
I agree with @rowe33, for the reasons laid out. It’s not just the abusers, as an absolute number, it’s the enablers at a systematic and structural level. How Cardinals were implicated in covering for abusers.
And that organizational support can not be ignored. It is an organization that wants to claim moral supremacy and guidance. We can’t just hold them to a higher standard, we have an obligation to do so!
And if you want to say that Pope Francis represents a church trying to correct course and become better moral stewards, I’d be inclined to agree. To a point. But there is more they can, and must, do to rectify their past behavior.
But what have we seen in the past few years? It’s that seemingly EVERY large organization has had these kinds of problems in terms of enabling abusers.
Well I mean 100% of the priests that taught at my high school while I was there were guilty of covering up sexual abuse by other priests. Every other teacher was either a regular layperson or a brother/sister of the Marianist order (one was the guidance counselor and I found out later that he abused my friend but I didn’t count this as he wasn’t a priest).
You’re saying that I can’t prove how widespread the abuse was but I’m not sure why you can state as a fact that “the vast, vast majority of those people working for the Church are not committing abuse, or covering it up. Most priests aren’t abusing their parishoners, or covering up for other priests who do.” I mean how do you know? Have you seen all the hidden files that the Church has kept?
If there are other worldwide organizations that have systematically covered up this type of abuse then they should be fully condemned as well.
The policies of the Church itself haven’t exactly helped the matter. Forbidding priests from marriage, forbidding consensual sex, and only allowing men to be priests are pretty obvious factors here in my opinion.
Note that the priest that taught at my school was a married priest, having converted from another religion to Catholicism. He ended up abusing his wife but as far as I know, he didn’t actually rape any children. Just covered it up.
CBS covered up the abuses of Charlie Rose… CBS: EVIL, OR PURE EVIL? Tons of colleges have had problems covering up sexual abuse. Are they all pure evil?
Again, the problem isn’t criticizing them for those acts, it’s just taking it that extra level to try to destroy a religion of one and a half billion people.
Did CBS systematically cover up the rape of children for decades? Or did they cover up the sexual harassment perpetrated by one man? Are they the same scale?
I’m assuming you’re a devout Catholic and that’s great, I support your right to believe what you want. But you seem to be blind to the fact that the Church itself is extremely fallible. It’s run by humans that are no better or worse than anyone else. Or in this particular case, worse than most humans that I know of.
A bunch of colleges, like Penn State, did. Is Penn State PURE EVIL?
No, I’m not at all.
No, I’m merely pushing back on your entirely one-sided characterization of a massive religion. The Catholic Church is the single largest charitable organization in the world. They feed and shelter immense numbers of people.
The characterization of the entire church as “pure evil” is absurd and wrong.
I fail to see how any good they do excuses or somehow offsets the evil. If they spend a certain amount of money on charity then that washes away the rape of children? Any organization that can cover that up for decades…decades dude…is evil in my mind. I don’t care what they do with their remaining time.
Here’s how they can become NOT evil in my mind. Release it all. Release every single cover up, every single abuse scandal…everything.
Yeah dude, it’s more complex than that. The Catholic church is not a binary value. It’s not a monolithic organization dedicated to raping children. It is MORE than that.
They are neither pure good, nor pure evil. They are a massive organization of millions of people, who do both good and evil, like most human beings.
That’s bullshit though. Most human beings do not rape children then cover it up for decades. The fact is that the leaders of the Church have done that. For decades. They are STILL doing it. You can’t just hand wave that away, like kids will be kids. I would say that most humans would NOT cover it up. Most humans would expose it. Would you agree with that? Are most humans incapable of such a horrific thing?
Look, I’ll concede that it’s likely that most people involved in the Church aren’t guilty of actively covering up the sexual abuse. But enough are involved that I maintain the organization as a whole is evil until they completely disclose every single piece of evidence related to it. That’s something the Church will obviously never do, given the insane financial liability it would involve, so we’ll just have to keep learning of it piecemeal as the rot is exposed.
