So who's going to see the Pope?

NIMAN wrote: »

I'll admit I didn't watch much of it, but did watch more of the analysis and read media reports.

I saw various people on from all the survivor groups etc, and they all said that he did not apologise and admit that they covered up paedo's. I was taking their word for it. They even said that he can't admit that, cos it would leave them open to legal actions.

I couldn't bring myself to watch much of it, I wouldn't have the stomach for it to be honest. Once I heard Daniel O'Donnell and Nathan Carter were included, that done it for me !!

He didn't address that but they will try and say he did.

EdgeCase wrote: »

I doubt it was a dorm in a Magdalene Laundry anyway.

No but the building looked similar

FrancieBrady wrote: »

He didn't address that but they will try and say he did.

Then why are some making it sound like he apologised many times this weekend?

Did he or didn't he?

NIMAN wrote: »

My own mother today was visibly shocked when she listened to them discuss the 800 babies in Tuam. No idea how she didn't hear it before, but she wouldn't be a current affairs watcher.

She couldn't get her head around it.

"Thats only one of the evils your beloved church has gotten up to in this country".

What else could I say?

Jaysus you didn't say that to your poor ma did you ??

The poor woman is only into it for the spirituality and faith not the politics.

Irish Kings wrote: »

Jaysus you didn't say that to your poor ma did you ??

The poor woman is only into it for the spirituality and faith not the politics.

I did indeed say it. We have had many debates about the evils of the CC, and she acknowledges them.

How she never heard about Tuam I'll never know. But I could see that it was something she couldn't quite comprehend. Perhaps she now knows how many feel, since many aren't as forgiving as her to past evils.

EdgeCase wrote: »

I get the impression there simply aren't any troops to muster. I think we are really seeing the organisation as an outward shell of its former self.
The decline has also been rapid enough that I think many both inside and outside the church are often a bit surprised. It's just a huge shift in Irish sociology.

We've gone from a somewhat extreme version of being devout Catholics to a far more normal relationship with religion that is looking much more like the rest of Northern Europe. It's just the change happened more rapidly, compressed over a few decades.

I severed my ties with the Catholic Church when the Tuam scandal came to light, having had a strained relationship with it for years previous to this, and having grown up believing it to be a wonderful thing. I wonder how many others decided to quit in a very rapid decision / thought process like this. It was an immediate, visceral "that's it, I'm f*cking done" in my case. Haven't set foot in a Catholic Church since and my relationship with God is an entirely private one.

To be honest, my own estrangement from the church began when I hit puberty. I'd be very surprised if that didn't happen to others. As soon as sexuality becomes a part of your life, the right wing sh!t pervading the church sets you on a direct collision course with it - trying as a teenager to navigate the whole "even thinking about a woman sexually is a sin, and touching your privates in private is basically committing a mini-holocaust of tiny half-people" crap, while unavoidably pitching random tents at the mere sight of a girl your age wearing a belly top, is absolutely hellish if you're somebody who takes religion seriously at that age, and at least in my case, over time the utter absurdity of the church's undisguised hatred for such a basic aspect of being a living creature is impossible to ignore. This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about when I say that the Catholic church's teachings on these things are themselves a form of psychological child abuse. I can only imagine how much worse and more ridiculous it is if you're gay.

It's truly astounding that some of the church's teachings on these issues which are based in utterly misinterpreted bible passages haven't been questioned within the organisation itself. The biblical basis for contraception being a sin is in a passage in which a guy gets smited for pulling out, but he's actually being smited for refusing to get a woman pregnant on God's orders. The passage where all sexual thoughts are automatically sinful most likely refers to a "wife" rather than a "woman", so at most it's saying "don't fantasise about someone else's partner", but that passage forms the entire basis for opposition to mastrubation and the idea that so much as entertaining a sexual thought about someone you're not currently married to is a mortal sin.

It's absolutely absurd. The church saw fit to jettison huge swathes of biblical rules over the years as they became incompatible with where society was going - why it refuses to budge on sexual conservatism is utterly beyond me. But between that issue and the scandals issue, which in my view are inextricably linked to eachother, I expect the church to continue haemorrhaging members.

Billy86 wrote: »

Well apparently there are 982 parishes in Pennsylvania, does anyone have a rough estimate of how many priests you might find per parish in a state with two big cities (Pittsburh + Philadelphia) and otherwise about 3mn people in a landmass about 50% bigger than Ireland?

The link below also seems to say around 1,150 priests (Priests Active Within Their Diocese + Priests Active Outside Their Diocese) but surely, surely it would have to be more than that with 300 of them abusing children? Either way it appears to be an incredibly high percentage of them who were at it.

https://www.pacatholic.org/resources/pa-catholic-statistics/

The abuse statistics go right back to 1947 so presumably the number of priests would be much higher. Didn't Ireland have 6000 priests at one point in the mid 1950s? That would easily equate to tens of thousands of priests in a sixty year period and I imagine the same for Penn.

Strazdas wrote: »

300 abusers is disgraceful but just to keep things in perspective, the population of Pennsylvania is 13 million, that is bigger than countries like Belgium and Sweden and nearly three times the population of Ireland.

Yeah, but it's not 300 abusers out of 13 million is it?

It's 300 out of whatever the church workforce is.

That ratio puts it clearly into "rapists anonymous" territory.

Irish Kings wrote: »

Jaysus you didn't say that to your poor ma did you ??

The poor woman is only into it for the spirituality and faith not the politics.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

She should know what her donation money goes towards.

spurious wrote: »

The weather will have put many off on the day, but given the age of most of the cohort, I'd say the word got out successfully about the amount of walking involved. The lack of support within the park for the less mobile was also a factor, though I think a 500,000 attendance was a bit aspirational.

Over a million managed it in 1979 and public transport wasn't as good then, Darts didn't exist then.

The interest is just not there as Ireland is not as religious as it was despite what RTE would have you believe with their OTT coverage.

murpho999 wrote: »

The interest is just not there as Ireland is not as religious as it was despite what RTE would have you believe with their OTT coverage.

Excuse me, I quite like the bell ringing enthusiasts segment.

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Faith is not a financial investment, so monitising it is pointless



Oh never underestimate the power of faith and ultimately hope, catholicism isn't dead yet

How much did the event cost? That's a financial investment.