So, Catholic Church: Evil or Pure Evil?

More specifically, Toyota does not secretly use machines with a propensity for mauling children, then hire children to run the machines, for no gain whatsoever.

To suggest that this is a bureaucratic issue is dodging a large portion of the problem. Bure (fuck that word) that sort of corruption leads to misuse of funds, maybe skirting some regulatory laws. Enron didn’t suddenly become a safe haven for child molesters, there is not an equivalency. Bureaucratic corruption in the Church would be misuse of tithes to buy motorcycles or something. Unless your corporation is buying or selling child rape as a product, this is something different.

H.

I would have to go with the “pure evil” category, simply because of 1) their vehement opposition to family planning which causes so much needless overpopulation in some of the poorest countries that most need (and want) access to contraception, and 2) this unbelievable bullshit about protecting molesters in the church hierarchy.

The only good thing about this is that hopefully the official, organized Catholic church will see a sharp dropoff in membership and in financial and political clout as a direct result of their heads-in-the-sand shut-up-go-away attitude towards the incredible abuse problem they have.

And yes, I do think that the church’s doctrines on celibacy, anti-homosexuality, and an exclusively male priesthood all directly contribute to this epidemic of abuse. I think that traditionally the safest place for a gay male in a Catholic country to go was probably into the priesthood – they knew that they would not have to put up a pretense of heterosexuality, and they knew they would have access to lots of young boys and men, with the church providing cover for their molestations. Yes, I’m sure there are even second-generation molesters (ones who were molested as youths and then entered the priesthood to continue perpetrating the abuse); it’s obvious that this is an endemic, institutional psychosis at this point.

I’m not mincing words here because this shit is intolerable, unsupportable, and literally an offense against God. If the entire official Catholic hierarchy was deposed tomorrow, I would lead the standing ovation.

Corrected with internal Church views.

The Catholic Church is an organization, Catholicism is a religion. While I find Catholicism primitive, embarrassingly stupid, and a negative force on humanity as a whole (As I do all superstition-based religions) that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Espousing a belief is not a crime against humanity - when put on a scale with people who’ve committed actual crimes like violating the laws of war or Holocaust deniers or engaging in willful genocide, the Pope doesn’t even rate.

Same point, this has nothing to do with belief, other than to add a sugary coating of hypocrisy.

History is irrelevant here - you can’t hold the current religious administration responsible for the direct actions of historical predecessors. That’s as dumb as holding present-day Germany responsible for the predations of Nazi Germany.

We’re not talking about history, we’re talking about the current, sitting Pope and his direct involvement with covering up institutional child rape, as well as one-off involvement in directly protecting known child rapists.

I await your reply after my clarification.

H.

When a large organization does a coverup those doing the coverup are just seen as loyal members trying to do damage control. There are plenty of corporate and governmental examples of this to draw on.

I’m trying so hard not to Godwin the thread right now. Let me just say that “other people are doing it” is not a defense when comparing cooking books to capital crimes.

H.

p.s. Somebody tell me that child molestation is a capital crime, ffs.

Got facts to cite to back that up?

Keep in mind that the church is freaking huge, and the last time I remember reading up on this topic it was still only a tiny percentage of overall priests that had ever had any allegations of molestation directed towards them.

I think nobody would argue that the church has a problem in that it’s been sheltering some bad apples and apparently willing to shelter them despite the danger they might re-offend. That being said, I’m not seeing any evidence that would substantiate a claim of “endemic, institutional psychosis” at this point.

Hey, if you’ve got evidence that the Pope himself has personally sheltered a fugitive from justice, go to the appropriate authorities with it.

And seriously, dude? “Kill the Pope”?

Proportional response: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

Depends who your fellow inmates are.

He issued an order to keep any reports of molestation secret. That’s direct involvement, again hoping to avoid the Godwin.

H.

It’s not a defense - it’s an explanation. The Catholic Church isn’t guilty of anything. It can’t be. It’s a structure. It’s like saying that Ike Turner’s house is responsible for those unsightly bruises. You and others have a problem with a specific subset of the Catholic hierarchy - if you want to understand WHY they acted the way they did, this is certainly an element of it. There was never any vast, sweeping plague of pedophilia that overtook the entire priesthood like a virus - there were lots of isolated incidents that were handled the same way that isolated incidents with the potential to put the organization in a bad light would be handled at many extremely large organizations. It wasn’t right, and it would be great if The Pope would make a statement that they kind of dicked that whole thing up, but that doesn’t make the structure evil or wrong. Pointing out that the bad thing in this scenario had to do with child molestation is poisoning the well - just because it was a particularly bad thing they tried to keep out of the press doesn’t mean that the Church’s actions weren’t consistent with your regular garden-variety big organization face saving maneuver.

I honestly don’t get all this hostility to the Church in general. As far as religious organizations go, these guys are pretty damned liberal. I live in a state where I get to routinely hear people defend the idea that the Earth is 6,000 years old, as proven by this science right here, and that because people have ears or eyes or diphallic disorder or whatever the hell constitutes irreducible complexity, they must have been molded out of dirt and divine skin flakes. At least the Catholic Church isn’t THAT far gone.

Complaining about The Catholic Church as a monolithic object isn’t productive, much like complaining about Islam in light of jihadi terrorism isn’t going to get you anywhere. Go after members of the hierarchy that did terrible things on the demerits of the bad things that they have done and I’ll lead the cheers, but trying to blame a power structure for the way in which bad people have used it is just useless rhetoric.

The issue is that once someone who is directly involved (See http://documents.nytimes.com/reverend-lawrence-c-murphy-abuse-case#document/p54) becomes Pope, it ain’t a subset any more. When the top of the organization is protecting the bottom of the organization from being prosecuted for a heinous crime (since we apparently can’t mention the crime lest the Church is besmirched) (kidfuckers) then it is the entire organization. Do you honestly believe that over the last 30 years there was a priest anywhere in this country that didn’t know about this problem?

Put another way: If ten people know that one of their neighbors raped a child and conspire to cover it up just because they don’t want the neighborhood to look bad, are they not supporting child rape at that point? Are these just “good people” because other “good people” on the next street lied about their house values to keep taxes down? Apparently if more than one group does anything bad, everybody gets a pass on anything, is what this whole “child rapist coverup and protection is just like corporate greed” argument is saying.

H.

Well, they’re relying on a God-win, so it’s kinda hard to avoid at this point.

What do I win?

Yes.5

Bend over, you can learn what questionable bookkeeping practices feel like.
Spoiler Alert!

An old gay priest’s cock.

H.

The obligation to go to the appropriate authorities with this information. Go on, get going.

I started to write a long post about this but got so angry I became totally incoherent. So I’ll just leave you with this link on the good work the Church is accomplishing.

Oh, and of course this piece of investigative journalism.

I always find it illuminating to study the history of the Catholic Church (which is part of the historical legacy of all Christian churches, except for the Eastern Orthodox church). The Church has gone through repeated cycles of revival and descent into corruption for pretty much its entire history. Lots of the religious orders - the Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, etc., were founded and supported by the Pope as a response to the corruption and simony of the “regular” Church. Each one of them in turn ended up corrupted as they gained power and wealth, leading to the next “revival” of the Church. Protestantism is just a variant on that pattern.

In other words, nothing new here…

I understand your point, but the church, unlike Ike Turner’s house isn’t a physical object, it’s a system of rules and regulations. As we have a bunch of programmers and game-design people here, it seems fair to ask “Does the structure of the regulations that comprise the Catholic Church promote pedophilia / the covering up of pedophilia?” If the answer to that question is yes, there’s probably an ethical imperative to change those rules.

The analogy of a machine that can only maim children, and that only children are hired to operate isn’t terribly off base. Legal repercussions or not, I think people have the right to be incensed at the people in charge if they don’t either change the design of the machine to remove the child sized hole above the rotating blades, or stop hiring people small enough to fall in the hole.