It certainly isn’t the Netherlands.
This isn’t news any more. News would be an official Catholic organization that wasn’t a front for repressed perverts and apologists for child abuse.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Just a hunch, but I bet Bahrain doesn’t have a lot.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Is there any large bureaucratic organization tasked with caring for children that does not have this problem?
Grewgills,
The question is not whether there are people who sexually assault children in organizations. The question is whether the organization makes a concerted effort to hide those rapes. The RCC has a habit of trying to bury the news.
On this scale? With such an expenditure of time and effort spent hindering prosecution of the perpetrators while blaming the victim? While simultaneously claiming a moral high ground with respect to human sexuality?
Name one, Grewgills.
I appreciate the focus on how bad it is for priests to molest/rape children, but how about some attention on the absurd rule that catholic priests can’t marry? It’s a ridiculous rule that, as far as I know, arose from the Catholic church not wanting to contribute any financial support to priests’ spouses. Cheapskate perverts. Maybe if priests were allowed/encouraged to have wives to have sex with, kids would be targets less often . . . ?
Grewgills –
I understand your point. But remember the church is supposed to be more ethical, more godly etc.
Your point just shows they’re just another group of flawed people. And it does seem they have a disproportionate number of molestation cases.
And also other child-care groups don’t have the same motive to hide their deviant members. Remember it’s not just the crime, it’s the cover-up.
Why just accuse them of Pederasty? In the US, 22% of child abuse victims were pre-pubescent, making them technically the victims of paedophiles.
I dislike the way the Catholic Church has managed to make even their most strident critics forget who nearly a quarter of the abused were.
The RCC is not to be trusted on this. I won’t believe anything any bishops (yes, that includes archbishops, cardinals and popes) say about this until they routinely turn their child molesters over to the civil authorities.
As long as Cardinal Law is hiding out at the Vatican, it is very clear that they have not reformed and have absolutely no intention of reforming.
Yeah, but they had Michael Jackson.
…sorry, I just couldn’t resist.
Is there any large bureaucratic organization tasked with caring for children that does not have this problem?
The problem being “a front for repressed perverts and apologists for child abuse”? Yes, certainly; the public school system for one.
how about some attention on the absurd rule that catholic priests can’t marry?
It’s been given, on this very blog.
Well, at least they’re finally taking responsibility.
html fail…
Close. It’s about disposition of the priest’s estate upon death.
As a Lebowski tragic I feel I must: ‘What’s a…pederast, Walter?‘
Nobody fucks with the Jesus!
8 year olds dude
sparganium5 @ 5:
It is an absurd rule, however, paedophiles aren’t attracted to adults. The church has long been playing a game of “hide the molester” moving them around to new fields full of victims. They knowingly shelter criminals, and allowing priests to marry isn’t going to address or solve that problem.
If I lived in Italy, I think I’d start wanting my .17 square miles back.
@ Caine: “They knowingly shelter criminals, and allowing priests to marry isn’t going to address or solve that problem.”
It might help if RCC didn’t actively try to repress normal, healthy sexuality in priests (who happen to be just regular (albeit delusional) people, complete with sex drive). The repressed sexuality ends up being directed towards vulnerable children rather than adult partners. Yes, the RCC exacerbates the problem they created by shuffling these child molesters to new places with fresh victims; that is a travesty. I just wonder how much the problem would be lessened if there weren’t the “mandate from god” that priests aren’t supposed to EVER have sex.
sparganium5 @ 19:
It would certainly be more healthful. The catholic church has always had a vested interest in controlling people’s sexuality while at the same time being willing to turn a blind eye to priestly activities. Priests having affairs is hardly uncommon, and it’s not a crime outside of the church. Hell, my mother had an affair with a priest. That still doesn’t answer for those priests who are paedophiles. The ability to marry wouldn’t make a difference to them, outside of the possibility of creating their own potential victims.
@Caine: ” That still doesn’t answer for those priests who are paedophiles. The ability to marry wouldn’t make a difference to them”
Agreed. Pedophiles find safe haven in the RCC. Perhaps it attracts them in the first place for this reason.
It is a stupid rule, but it is a rule. These people know what they are signing up for.
Plus my thoughts on organized religion are that while I think that they are based on a shitty premise, namely worship of some megalomaniac ghosty fellow, they must keep their rules or they immediately shed any thin veil of authority.
If these rules are because it is what God wants, who are men to go about changing the rules?
As soon as that shit starts happening they become as bad as Mormons with their governance by divine revelation.
So I have zero sympathy for the people who choose to be priests as they know what they are signing up for.
Sympathy should be reserved for their victims, who didn’t sign up for shit.
Oh come on, it was probably only like 30% actual penetration, plus you’re ignoring the cases where the child was into it, you cant just go making this a witch hunt against priests, its just a few bad apples, they’re just people, sinners like everyone else, and its all part of God’s plan anyway, how do you know that they’re not better off for having been raped as a kid? This is all just a conspiracy against the catholic church by atheists, in fact the “priests” in question were probably undercover atheists, no True Catholic would touch a child inappropriately.
/Bill Bonohue
Of course, the rules in religions always stem from what the people in power want, not from what the non-existent sky-daddy wants.
grewgills @2: show me another organization that has “This Problem” (apologies for the re-post from another thread but this needs to be said – again)
When Ratzinger was Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2001 he re-issued the Crimen Sollicitationis letter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#cite_note-17 ) to all the Bishops in the world which reinforced the church rule on absolute secrecy over allegations of child abuse by priests – on pain of excommunication. It is impossible that he was unaware of the extent of the paedophile problem given his position in the Vatican and the massive court cases being won by victims of paedophile priests in the US (which bankrupted several diocese). For decades the catholic church continued to move paedophile priests around the country/world and refused to report them to the police. If you think this is hyperbole, Ratzinger’s lawyers didn’t, when Ratzinger was named as a co-conspirator in lawsuits against paedophile priests they sought and won immunity from prosecution because the Pope is a Head of State ( see, http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/pope-seeks-immunity-over-sex-abuse-suit/2005/08/17/1123958097061.html }
The real question is how any country allows this institution to run any school anywhere.
err, Bill Donohue, close enough, he doesnt deserve to get his name spelled right anyway.
Agreed.
well, you shouldn’t. By Caine’s logic, men in prison who have sex with each other aren’t attracted to women. It may be true of some, but it certainly isn’t true of all.
Well that really gets to the point of it right?
There is exactly zero discernible difference between the wants of the humans involved in a religion and the claimed wants of the deity they worship because humans wrote all the rules.
That still doesn’t answer for those priests who are paedophiles. The ability to marry wouldn’t make a difference to them
Nice tautology: it wouldn’t make a difference to those for whom it wouldn’t make a difference. But that has no bearing on the validity of what you responded to: ” Maybe if priests were allowed/encouraged to have wives to have sex with, kids would be targets less often . . . ?”
That is exactly my point.
truthmachine,
No, the problem being sexual abuse of children. There is not a significant difference in the chance of a child being sexually molested in a Church or in a school. The Church would have liked you to think otherwise, but it wasn’t true. The pendulum has swung the other way and its just as true on this side.
The cover-up was/is shameful, but again it is typical CYA bureaucracy in motion. Whether it is a corporation, a church, a local government, or what some other organization it generally turns out the same.
There is exactly zero discernible difference between the wants of the humans involved in a religion and the claimed wants of the deity they worship because humans wrote all the rules.
Brain imaging studies show the same pattern of activity when people contemplate their own preferences and God’s preferences.
It’s true that organizations which place grown men in a position of authority will draw some paedophiles. It’s the coverups that are damning; you’re supposed to remove the problem ones.
But let’s remember that when they are removed, it will make the news. We probably shouldn’t yell “aha!” every time it happens.
Unless, of course, there is evidence of a coverup.
That’s an institutional failure.
I’m not sure that enforced celibacy creates paedophiles; then again, maybe the whole shebang is just warping people. In my experience, ex-Catholics have…issues.
No, the problem being sexual abuse of children
No, you’re wrong, that wasn’t the stated problem.
There is not a significant difference in the chance of a child being sexually molested in a Church or in a school.
And that is quite false.
The cover-up was/is shameful, but again it is typical CYA bureaucracy in motion. Whether it is a corporation, a church, a local government, or what some other organization it generally turns out the same.
With this claim you have now joined the cover-up.
It is not enforced.
Priests choose to be priests and can leave whenever they feel the need. They know what they are getting into. The rules are pretty damn clear.
The Church is evil as they are responsible for the institutional cover up and excuse of the crimes but the offending priests still make the choice to victimize. Making excuses one way or the other ignores the sick reality of the whole problem.
No more health care for anyone!
You really shouldn’t call them pederasts. It’s an insult to pederasts, and I don’t mean that facetiously. A pederast may be someone who has consensual sex with a young boy. Questionable as that is by itself, it’s not nearly as bad as what these priests are partaking in: child rape.
They’re Catholic rapists, not Catholic pederasts.
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2004_02_27_JohnJay/index.html#prev1
What a well thought out response.
There are cover-ups and cover-ups. The Catholic ones are official policy of the organization, governed by non-disclosure rule (under severe ecclesiastical penalties, which, however ridiculous might seem to a secularist, have a great influence upon the believer). I don’t think any school or government has a chart explicitly stating child abuse is not to be reported/prosecuted.
I haven’t been a katlik for over 40 years but I remember my catechism. Holy Orders is (are?) unique among the Seven Sacraments(TM) in that it is a DIRECT CALL FROM GOD. This call is, of course, self-reported. The correct and consistent response of the Vatican should be to excommunicate and possibly burn-at-the-stake everyone who pretends to a CALL in order to diddle kiddies.
(I know, I know “correct and consistent” harhar.)
(sorry about the formatting, HTML is Greek to me)
???
That image of the dormitory, with the dark crosses laid out so perfectly upon the white sheets, is so awfully sinister, considering the repeated sexual abuse that took place behind the scenes. I’m sure that the crosses, a christian symbol of ultimate authority and supernatural power, were deliberately used as a psychological weapon against the young children who inhabited that room.
Ahem. No. Bullshit.
The equivalent, to be equivalent, would be if schools had written policy to cover up child abuse by denial, kicking kids out of school, terminating the child’s rights to happiness after death, making sure the entire time to move teachers with tenure-for-life incapable of being fired to entirely new schools with no questions asked by the new school district, and, oh, said policy was issued and signed by the President of the United States.
Again, Bullshit.
while no one is saying pedophilia is only a problem of religious institutions, what we are saying is that the RCC is culpable in as much as they aided and abetted felons. Any secular institution which did so would be shut down and it’s leadership jailed. But the RCC is somehow immune from this, because their leader claims national sovereignty and because he claims divine protection.
So, catholic apologists: What’s wrong with this picture !?
DLC #43
There’s a further point. The RCC claims to be the moral authority in the world. Aiding and promoting obvious immorality shows this claim to be false.
There’s a further point. The RCC claims to be the moral authority in the world. Aiding and promoting obvious immorality shows this claim to be false.
Ah, but the Church leadership has given itself an out: members may do wrong, and may even sin, but the Church itself cannot. Individuals within the Church might be the protectors of child rapists, and it might be the policy of the hierarchical formal organization to protect the kid fuckers, but the Church itself cannot ever be held responsible for the evils done by the people comprising it. It’s the ultimate limited liability.
A celibate clergy and the Church’s stand against the ordination of women are policies whose natural consequence is the sort of perversity exampled by the sexual exploitation of children.
@Grewgills #30
No, your point is, quite simply, Tu Quoque ignoring the depth and degree. The RCC has, as its institution-wide policy, not only tacit countenance, but active complicity. If it was really just CYA, the Catholic Church would have had to realize long ago that pedophile priests are a liability and gotten rid of them instead of just moving them around. Even if they’re going to cover up the crime, they’d have to be blind and stupid to put the priest in a position to do it again, and fucking bonkers to give him “fresh meat” ie. a parish that isn’t wary of him. Look at corporate America for an example: the quickest career death for a CEO is sexual harassment. Yeah, it might get covered up. Yes, the victim might get hush money. But the perpetrator doesn’t get to keep his job. Rule #1 of CYA is “don’t let it happen again.”
If you are saying that the policies cause pedophilia, then I don’t buy it. Priests who are attracted to women are going to break the rules by having sex with women, not children.
If, on the other hand, you are saying that the policies attract pedophiles, then, yeah, you might have a point.
The issue is that the calling to the priesthood and its requirement of celibacy are seen by pedophiles as a way to shut down their urges. This is, of course, utter foolishness: all it really does is provide those urges with a sense of moral rectitude under which the corruption can grow, a position of authority and trust over the people over whom they pray and on whom they prey, and plenty of opportunity for complete privacy in which to perpetrate their atrocities.
That, and the more cynical ones who realize that the Church HAS AN OFFICIAL POLICY that protects them, covers up their misdeeds, and sends them into new territory where they can repeat their crimes against new populations of unsuspecting victims. The whole system might just as well have been set up deliberately for their benefit.
So yes, it could be said that the policies of the Church contribute to the problem. The Church could make incredible steps towards eliminating the problem by: a) adopting a healthy attitude towards adult sexuality, instead of the festering ball of guilt that is the Catholic mindset; b) not requiring celibacy, so that pedophiles don’t enter the clergy as an attempt to escape their own evil; and c) most importantly, make a policy of sending perpetrators directly to the civil authorities for prosecution.
In the US there’s a federal law (18 USC 1) called misprision of a felony. Section 4 reads:
Bernard Cardinal Law, the ex-Archbishop of Boston, is living in Vatican City specifically to escape prosecution under this law.
If this is happening in Europe, and the US–where Catholicism is not the dominant religion–just imagine how much worst things are where the Catholic Church has a virtual monopoly such as Latin America.
I remember reading one article (i can’t find it right now) where it was hypothesized that suppression of sexual desires may cause your brain to remain immature with regards to sexual orientation which leads to attraction towards children. I may not have phrased it appropriately. It would be great if somebody can disect it.
The move in that direction is very recent and I am not sure how true that is is even today (loofah).
It is a very recent development that schools, both public and private, are becoming more likely to out faculty or staff that abuse the children sexually or otherwise than to simply move them quietly on.
To be clear I am not saying the Catholic Church should be excused; I am saying that their bureaucracy and leadership are morally on par with Ford, Pfizer, Phillip Morris, etc. They made/make decisions based on a financial calculus and the pain, suffering, or death of their customers is of secondary concern. If the Catholic Church admits wrongdoing they further open themselves to lawsuits and it will increase the damages they will eventually be forced to pay out. If you doubt my point look at corporate history regarding dangerous products (cigarettes, the Pinto, asbestos, lead paint, etc). All large bureaucracies hide their misdeeds as long as they can, often longer than serves them, and certainly much longer than is healthy for those they purport to serve. The venom for the others on that list seems a bit more tempered. Tu quoque perhaps, but there seems to be strong difference in the level of response.
@37:
THAT report is supposed to provide equivalence between the institutionalization of child rape in the CC vs other insitutions like schools.
THAT report, that was “commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and was based on surveys completed by the Catholic dioceses in the United States.”
That’s what you want to base your argument of equivalence on?
ROFLMAO
wait, did you actually expect to be taken seriously after that?
wait, let me laugh even harder.
…umm what comes after ROFLMAO?
To be clear I am not saying the Catholic Church should be excused; I am saying that their bureaucracy and leadership are morally on par with Ford, Pfizer, Phillip Morris, etc.
to be clear, you are so full of shit as to be considered in need of a scuba apparatus in order to breathe.
Aside from the completely asinine comparison of an organization whose entire CLAIM TO EXISTENCE is moral authority to ones that just work to market items and money, please do show us WHERE in the bylaws of the Ford Motor Corporation are written the instructions as to how to protect child molesters, as they ARE written in the bylaws of the CC.
you’re a lying sack of shit, and deserve whatever hell your religion has thought up for you.
#36 WTF? I doubt there is a civilized country on Earth in which an 8-year-old boy can legally consent to have sex with anyone.
#52 I’ve heard reporting similar to that. The age at which men begin training into the priesthood pretty much guarantees that they will be sexually inexperienced and immature, frozen in their teens. The reporting indicated that, at least at the time, the church did not provide much in the way of training or guidance to the priests to deal with sexual feelings or help with sexual maturation. The RCC created an environment where men with immature sexuality and insufficient training to deal with sexual feelings were placed in positions of power over young boys. The results are unsurprising. As adults, the priests are 100% responsible for their actions. The RCC, as an institution, is completely culpable as well for facilitating the crimes and covering them up.
If they allowed priests to marry, they’d probably have a different pool of candidates besides closeted Catholic school boys. Maybe they should just allow openly gay priests.
How long until the RCC has to declare Chap 7 bankruptcy and get dissolved? Maybe the parishes could get bought out by other churches to bolster their membership.
The Roman Catholic Church, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.
Atta boy Ichthyic!
Not child rape, but the entirely predicted and monetarily calculated deaths of their customers. I put indiscriminate killing right up there.
True enough, but those were the only stats I could find in my admittedly limited search that had a direct comparison of overall instances v instances within the Church that was not behind a subscription wall. Do you have any sources that contradict the numbers presented or are you going to rely purely on ad hominem?
True enough
FULL STOP
get lost, you gobshite.
purely on ad hominem?
as per most morons, you also don’t know what an ad hominem is.
On second look I see what you mean.
All fine argument and not a bit of ad hominem in it. You sir are brilliant.
How silly of me I forgot,
;)
Grewgills,
Dismissing an argument because of the person delivering it rather then engaging with it? Ad hominem.
Insulting the person delivering it after dismissing their argument? Not ad hominem.
Learn to spot the difference.
How silly of me I forgot,
forgot to mention the bias, you mean?
yeah, funny that.
*yawn*
sober up and call us in the morning so we can laugh at your jester dance some more.
#34: Priests choose to be priests and can leave whenever they feel the need.
Careful here; the Dutch priests accused grew up in an almost-sectarian Catholic piece of the Netherlands, in the first decades of the 20th century, where it was considered coutume that at least 1 member of each (large!) family joined the clergy. Officially, you were supposed to have a calling from God to do so, but seemingly his earthly representatives helped the odds a bit.
So, having been indoctrinated with RC dogma in their youth, at age 18 or so they “chose” to become unmarried priests for the rest of their lives, to be indoctrinated on a daily basis even more. These people did hardly have the freedom to choose to join, and even less so to leave in the midst of their lives without a social network outside the convent and the RC faith.
I don’t want to defend their actions, because they certainly knew how wrong it was what they did, but I’d like point out that free will has a limited dimension if you’ve been brought up in the smothering arms of a strictly authoritarian religion.
Each person who commits a crime is responsible for the crime they committed. However, organizations can be aware of whether their policies will create more or less crimes in the long run. If the mayor turns off all the street lights, crime will go up. The mayor didn’t actually murder anyone, but because of their actions, more people got murdered.
There is absolutely no reason to voluntarily create a MoralHazard that encourages child rape. That’s wicked.
Tis Himself,OM @44 : yes, they do claim to be the arbiter of morals, despite the fact that they exhibit a high incidence of pedophilia, alcoholism, depression and other mental illnesses.
Which leads me to MAJeff, OM @ 45 — The church can do no wrong, because it’s perfect, but the men it elevates above everyone else — men selected to be leaders of the flock too often turn out to be drunken pedophiles. So there goes their perfection. It’s not unlike the claim they make for their deity — a perfect being who made an imperfect race of beings ? God the all-knowing all father who cannot manage to keep Adam and Eve from eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil ?
It’s one of those dilemmas the apologists spend much time and effort on only to hand-wave away with “He moves in Mysterious Ways.”
And the legion of imperfections and God-Mistakes which follow only make things worse for them.
Grewgills
“To be clear I am not saying the Catholic Church should be excused; I am saying that their bureaucracy and leadership are morally on par with Ford, Pfizer, Phillip Morris, etc”
No, absolutely, fundamentally, no equivalence. This is a bad analogy and you are just plain wrong. After all the information above, do you really want to stick with this argument? If you want to discuss the evils of US corporations I will happily join your chorus – just don’t make a false equivalence between the crimes of the RCC/Vatican and the crimes of Corporations.
Here are some differences that make the RCC/Vatican more culpable, more dangerous and more eggregious than corporates:
1)The RCC/Vatican makes catholicism both a Religion and a State. (state immunity for crimes)
2}The Vatican has Treaty signing power to bind other States under international law (concordats).
3) RCC claims moral authority and is deferred to on moral matters by people and States.
4) RCC controls an enormous amount of aid and education in the third world.
5) The current head of the RCC/Vatican promulgated a written “silence, cover up and obstruction of justice” policy re. child mollestation allegations within the RCC/Vatican (crimen sollicitationis).
6) Vatican has successfully denied cooperation to civil authorities investigating crimes against children (Ireland, US, etc).
7) Vatican/RCC continues to shield paedophiles and responsible parties from prosecution (Pope, Cardinal Law, untold hundreds maybe thousands of priests)
8) Vatican/RCC absolutely refuses any transparency, cooperation or oversight by States, police and victims.
Grewgills, either you made a hasty and mistaken false equivalence argument or you are an apologist for the RCC/Vatican’s tens of thousands of sexual crimes against children. Which is it?
I’m actually from this little town (‘s-Heerenberg). Lived there for 17 years…with the stories I’ve heard before this doesn’t come as a surprise. It’s funny to see something so close to me on your blog PZ. Not that I’ve been abused or anything, I wasn’t even born back then and I’m not Catholic. But I do know some of the people that came out of the closet with this news. Incredible to see this news has even spread to the U.S. Great job PZ for bringing this to other peoples attention.
If I were the crazy conspiracy theory beliving type I might think that perhaps all this child-rape is some esoteric part of the Catholic docturine we just don’t know about, and might make a good basis for Dan Brown’s next best-seller if he has the guts.
I agree with a previous poster that the title of the article is totally unfair to pederasts who are generally attracted to teenage boys- Surely not so much a sickness as an indication that one has good taste. Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Socrates and Andre Gide were all pederasts as far as I’m aware.
Honestly, Ratzinger should be in jail for his part in the cover up, but he is a head of an allied state so there is virtually 0 chance that he will suffer any personal consequence. His elevation signaled the beginning of the Church’s final descent into being purely (or very nearly so) a church for the developing world much to the misfortune of both the Church and the developing world. That said…
Exactly so. An unsubstantiated claim was made several times that rates of abuse were higher withing the Catholic church than elsewhere (schools, other churches, youth sports, etc). The only support given for that particular claim is the not so definitive, “because I said so”. I provided statistics that point to rates being similar from a study commissioned by an admittedly biased source*. Unfortunately it appears that this is the only statistical comparison between abuse in the church and rates outside of the church. The response amounted to nothing more than your source is biased, ha ha ha, nothing to see here move along, your stupid. Reread comment 54, 55, 57, and 63. The only argument that is slipped into the personal abuse is, amounts to they’re hypocrites (re moral authority). If there is another source of statistics comparing these two sets I would like to see it, until then making that particular claim holds no more water than the worst of my stoned ramblings of yesterday.
QED
1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 are not about moral culpability, but power and the ability to use it.
3 = they’re hypocrites
5 and 7 are the root of the moral/ethical problem
It gets even better (and bear with me, my Engish might not be good enough for the technical details, but anyway): the RCC in the Netherlands decided that the claims they got for sexual harrasment were insurable. So, they got a claim from a victim and immediately rang their insurance company because, you know, that’s what their insurance should cover.
Dipsticks.
By the way, the insurance company thought not.
Gregills @ 70
Now we are getting somewhere, you appear to have dropped the false equivalence between corporate wrongdoing and Vatican/RCC wrongdoing.
Now for your “rates of abuse” argument. You are correct that paedophilia rates amongst clergy vs. general population are very difficult to ascertain for a variety of factors:
http://psychology.sju.edu/downloads/mcglone1.pdf
but that’s not really the point. The point is what an organization does and/or does not do when it find out it has a very significant rate of incidences of child abuse within their organization. The Vatican/RCC has not only consistently failed at every turn to do the right thing, it has actively done the wrong thing and continues to do so.
@#5, just a short answer: Offenders don’t usually offend because they aren’t getting enough. The sexual nature of the offense in a rape or child molestation is usually secondary to the power relationship. It is a particularly powerful controlling act to attack someone sexually — nothing else quite like it, one of the ultimate intrusions. Pederasts, molesters and rapists would generally still do so, married or not. See Google search on “sexual assault and power”.
The argument that an institution exists apart from the people in it is blatantly false. If you took all the people out of the Vatican, you’d have some really cool old buildings, and treasure, lots of treasure. What you would not have is a church to exert its authority over others. The papists and many, many other religious “leaders” make the same claim, in order to make their actions appear to be the result of some mystical, otherworldly power, instead of just another human fuckup.
The only surprising thing seems to be how long it took for gossip to make the newspapers in the Netherlands.
About the insurance: according to the newspaper, the insurance agency of the RCC decline to insure sexual harassment claims against the RCC in the Netherlands in 2000. The RCC claimed it came under ‘general bodily harm’ if that’s the right term, and in 2006 the insurance company and RCC compromised to a maximum of 1 million Euro to be paid by the insurance company, if a court case went against the RCC and only for cases before 2000. Given sexual harasment cases have a statuatory limit (right jargon? number of years in which to bring the case), it seems unlikely anybody ever gets convicted.
Rev. BigDumbChimp @#22 wrote:
Starts happening?
The RCC has been changing God’s Immutable Laws for much longer than the Mormons have existed. The celibate clergy is itself an innovation – allowing priests to marry would be a return to the original doctrine on that particular point.
Grewgills,
The report in the child abuse in Irish children’s homes run by the Catholic Church makes it clear that the abuse was not an aberration perpetrated by individuals acting against Church policy. Rather the abuse was a deliberate part of the system. It was not the system failing, it was how the system was supposed to work.
The report is quite clear. The Church was absolutely complicit in what happened.
Largely because I am sober.
A tangent really and all that’s left of that is even more tangential. I don’t think a couple of people here understand the meaning of ad hominem.
Old habits are hard to break.