Ongoing religious scandals

robindch

PDN wrote: »

if it's guns that are the problem in the US [...] then the problem in the child abuse scandal would be penises. Ban them thangs I say!

Ban them? Why not just cut them off, as Jesus suggested?

Jesus wrote:

If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

The Vatican is so frightfully unbiblical in this!

PeterIanStaker

PDN wrote: »

Interesting analogy.

So, if it's guns that are the problem in the US (rather than anything in the heads of the people using the guns, or any motivation, or any group they may belong to) then the problem in the child abuse scandal would be penises.

Ban them thangs I say! :pac:

My analogy was about not tackling the root of the problem - i.e. guns cause gun violence, clerical celibacy, the cover ups and canon law give paedophiles free rein in the RCC.

In fairness you do seem to have a sense of humour, because you made a d*ck joke, which I have yet to hear a Vatican spokesman do. . .

Dades

PeterIanStaker - don't get personal.

PeterIanStaker

that better?

Galvasean

legspin wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0417/abuse.html

One more nail...

I'm beginning to think that no amount of gaffs will have any significant effect on the RCC. Sure lots of people (mostly atheists and secularists) are getting outraged, but is Joe-So Catholic? Has there been any concrete evidence to show that mass attendences are down?

mikhail

Galvasean wrote: »

Has there been any concrete evidence to show that mass attendences are down?

I doubt it would be possible to get clean data on that. Mass attendances rise during recessions.

Sean Quagmire

LOL I had to laugh at this.

I love how the two lads are like 'pssst pope wake up..'



Story

Weird how the Irish Independent varies from pitch forking lunatics to sombre pope sympatisers.

PeterIanStaker

Tearful pope my @rse. Crocodile tears that they got caught, and not even the stupid pious types are able to blinker it out.

ps those two lads either side of him are kinda old for altar boys . .

robindch

Two interesting articles:

1. The german priest who took the stick for reassigning the abusing priest around Munich in the early 1980's has come out and said that he was pressured into making his statement in order to take "the pope out of the firing line". More here.

2. Michael Ruse, one of the few moderates amongst the current crop of religious-atheist writers, has changed his mind about a piece in which Dawkins strongly condemns the Vatican. In an article in the Huffington Post of all places, Ruse wrote:

Michael Ruse wrote:

I thought at the time that Dawkins was over the top and wrong. I now think that he was right and that it was I who was wrong. Let me say at once that, unlike Dawkins, I don't necessarily want to see this as the end of religion or even of the Catholic Church in some form. I stress that although I cannot share the beliefs of Christians, I respect them and applaud the good that is done in the name of their founder. But I do now think that as presently constituted, the Catholic Church is corrupt and should be eradicated.

You might argue that this is to go too far. But what is the alternative? Vatican Three, perhaps? The Church could open its doors to married priests, give women a proper role (if we can appoint a woman to the Supreme Court, why cannot a woman become a member of the College of Cardinals?), make a place within for gays and other minorities. It could recognize birth control for the blessing that it is and stop insisting that the moment the sperm gets to the ovum, nothing else matters but to preserve this entity, even though such a stand causes unnumbered cases of pain and sadness (and certainly does little to reduce the abortion rate) and leads the Catholic bishops to oppose universal health care, quite apart from the fact that it all flies in the face of the official philosophy of the Church, Thomism. And I could continue.

This will not happen. This last week, the Pope appointed an archbishop for Los Angeles. The appointee is a member of Opus Dei, for goodness's sake. You don't have to subscribe to the nuttiness of The Da Vinci Code to know what this means: he belongs to an organization that throve under Generalissimo Franco, about as right-wing as it is possible to get. Far from trying to reform, the Church is digging in and digging in.

Dawkins is right. The moral mess gets worse and worse. Hope of change is illusory. Götterdämmerung beckons. Although we have different motives and undoubtedly hope for different outcomes, I join Dawkins in welcoming the prospect.

robindch

Flamed Diving wrote: »

The will look at anything to blame, but themselves.

Briefly rereading the pope's letter from last month, here are a few additions to the list:

- Secularists
- The gays
- The jews
- The devil
- Atheists
- Lapsed Catholics who don't pray enough
- "Eroticism" on the telly and the internet
- Reduction in devotional practice and lack of reference to the gospels
- Misinterpreting the Second Vatican Council
- Inadequate procedures for selecting priests
- Bad teaching in the seminaries
- Society itself, for "favouring" the clergy and other authority figures
- Concern for the reputation of the church

Any more?

Flamed Diving

robindch wrote: »

Briefly rereading the pope's letter from last month, here are a few additions to the list:

- Secularists
- The gays
- The jews
- The devil
- Atheists
- Lapsed Catholics who don't pray enough
- "Eroticism" on the telly and the internet
- Reduction in devotional practice and lack of reference to the gospels
- Misinterpreting the Second Vatican Council
- Inadequate procedures for selecting priests
- Bad teaching in the seminaries
- Society itself, for "favouring" the clergy and other authority figures
- Concern for the reputation of the church

Any more?

Ah, it says don't rape and torture children!

PeterIanStaker

Society itself. WTF?

robindch

PeterIanStaker wrote: »

Society itself. WTF?

Yep, section 4, second para:

The Pope wrote:

Certainly, among the contributing factors we can include: [...] a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures [...] Urgent action is needed to address these factors

Note that no blame attaches to the church for placing itself, unambiguously, as one of the nation's principal authority figures. On the contrary, it's society's fault that it accepted what the church said about itself.

At least that -- possibly unintentional -- implication is quite true.

Galvasean

robindch wrote: »

Briefly rereading the pope's letter from last month, here are a few additions to the list:

- Secularists
- The gays
- The jews
- The devil
- Atheists
- Lapsed Catholics who don't pray enough
- "Eroticism" on the telly and the internet
- Reduction in devotional practice and lack of reference to the gospels
- Misinterpreting the Second Vatican Council
- Inadequate procedures for selecting priests
- Bad teaching in the seminaries
- Society itself, for "favouring" the clergy and other authority figures
- Concern for the reputation of the church

Any more?

We can expect 'the aliens!" by the end of the week.
Actually, anyone notice how since this volcano erupted there has been sweet frik all about the abuse scandal in the media? Almost as if it was washed away by a cloud of volcanic ash...

eoin5

That, and of course how fantastic Nick Clegg is. I dont care!

Plowman

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ColmDawson

Plowman wrote: »

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It's nice to see that politicians in Britain can be forthright about their atheism, unlike those in some other countries...

Plowman

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ColmDawson

Plowman wrote: »

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Thank you; you have asked about Irish politicians (after I didn't mention Ireland) and then answered your own question by reference to Bacik.

Mrs. Clegg is not a politician. I was talking about her husband's atheism because he happens to be running for the Prime Ministry.

Plowman

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eoin5

robindch wrote: »

Briefly rereading the pope's letter from last month, here are a few additions to the list:

- Secularists
- The gays
- The jews
- The devil
- Atheists
- Lapsed Catholics who don't pray enough
- "Eroticism" on the telly and the internet
- Reduction in devotional practice and lack of reference to the gospels
- Misinterpreting the Second Vatican Council
- Inadequate procedures for selecting priests
- Bad teaching in the seminaries
- Society itself, for "favouring" the clergy and other authority figures
- Concern for the reputation of the church

Any more?

I think you can add "different times", Daly used that as an excuse if I remember correctly.

sink

Eamon Gilmore is an atheist. I still wouldn't vote for him.

ColmDawson

Plowman wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Hey, I think I must have mistaken your post last night. Sorry I was a bit tetchy.

GLaDOS

Don't know if this has been mentioned, but another man is beinging a lawsuit against the pope.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8638798.stm

A man who says he was the victim of an American paedophile priest is bringing a lawsuit against the Pope and the Vatican in a US federal court.

His lawyers want the Church to release any files it has on abuse cases involving priests.

The alleged victim, whose identity has not been disclosed, says he was abused by the late Father Lawrence Murphy.

Fr Murphy is accused of attacking up to 200 children during his 20 years at a school for deaf children in Milwaukee.

He was finally moved from the St John school to another diocese in 1974, but was never prosecuted or defrocked.

A Church trial was opened after the Vatican received a letter from Fr Murphy's bishop in 1996, but it was not concluded by the time Fr Murphy died in 1998.

The alleged victim's lawyer, Jeff Anderson, says the Vatican has been negligent. "What we want the Vatican to do is step up to disgorge the secrets that they have in their files," he told the BBC.

'Horror'

The victim wrote to the then-Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano in 1995 asking the Pope to excommunicate Fr Murphy. The BBC has seen copies of the documents submitted to the court.


There is a grave and serious problem, and all trails and responsibility for that leads to one place, to the Vatican
Jeff Anderson
Plaintiff's lawyer

They include a seven-page letter to Fr Murphy graphically describing the alleged abuse and the effect it had on him.

"Do you know that you really ruined my life?" he writes.

The writer also says one boy abused by Fr Murphy later committed suicide. "God must punish you and send you to hell to stay forever," he adds.

The plaintiff says the Vatican did not reply to his letter, or to a another one sent several months later.

The fact that the alleged abuse was linked to the confessional meant the case should have been referred to the Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). At the time this body was run by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

The CDF says the first it knew about the Murphy case was in 1996.

The lawsuit names the Pope and two cardinals.

Mr Anderson says his client is not seeking money but wants the Church "to fundamentally come clean, to come forth with all documents that have evidence of crimes against children for decades".

He adds: "Until and unless all of those things are done, there is a grave and serious problem, and all trails and responsibility for that leads to one place, to the Vatican, to the pontiff."

The Vatican has not responded to the lawsuit so far. In an earlier interview the Pope's spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, told the BBC that Benedict XVI had taken a clear line of transparency.

Last month a Vatican newspaper editorial said media claims that the future Pope had failed to act against Fr Murphy were "ignoble", and that there had been no cover-up.

There has been a wave of allegations that Church authorities in Europe and North and South America failed to deal properly with priests accused of paedophilia, sometimes just moving them to new parishes where more children were put at risk.

robindch

Yesterday, Germany and Ireland.

Today, Belgium.

Flamed Diving

The wall slowly crumbles. Unfortunately, they have legions of blind, uncritical followers to hold it up.

Galvasean

robindch wrote: »

Yesterday, Germany and Ireland.

Today, Belgium.

I'm seeing plenty of resignations (no doubt with big golden handshakes), but when are we gonna see some of the buggers thrown in jail?

MrPudding

Plowman wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

No wonder, he worked with the Hitch...

MrP

iUseVi

MrPudding wrote: »

No wonder, he worked with the Hitch...

MrP

I saw the UK TV debate yesterday and during a response to a Catholic abuse question he said (something like, not exact words) "I'm not a religious person, but my wife is catholic....".

EDIT: most pundits think he "drew" that debate, imagine if it was the US; that statement would equal instant lose.

Erren Music

iUseVi wrote: »

I saw the UK TV debate yesterday and during a response to a Catholic abuse question he said (something like, not exact words) "I'm not a religious person, but my wife is catholic....".

EDIT: most pundits think he "drew" that debate, imagine if it was the US; that statement would equal instant lose.

TBH I think that TD's openly saying they are catholic and going to mass to be seen helps them get elected, which says a lot about our indoctrinated electorate.

Is their any information on the religious affiliations of TD's and the senior civil servants who run this country.