The Catholic Church Should Burn

[Arilynn]

Today’s Washington Post has an investigative article about child rape and other sexual abuses by Catholic priests against kids at a deaf residential school: Alleged Abuse of Deaf Children Points to Vatican’s Failings

Here are some quotes:

“Church officials up to and including Pope Francis were warned repeatedly and directly about a group of alleged predators....Yet they took no apparent action.”

WARNNG: Brief graphic quote follows. Sorry, I tried to put that part behind spoiler tags but couldn’t get them to work.

“Prosecutors say the children were fondled, raped, sometimes tied up and, in one instance, forced to wear a diaper to hide the bleeding. [All the while, their limited ability to communicate complicated their ability to tell others what was happening to them. Students at the school were smacked if they used sign language. One of the few hand gestures used by the priests, victims say, was an index figure to lips — a demand for silence.”

“The Italian victims’ efforts to sound the alarm to church authorities began in 2008 and included mailing a list of accused priests to Francis in 2014 and physically handing him the list in 2015.
It was not the church, however, but Argentine law enforcement that cut off Corradi’s access to children when it shut down the Provolo school in Lujan. Argentine prosecutors say the church has not fully cooperated with their investigation.”

A victim traveled to Rome, met Francis, and handed him a letter that named 14 priests and lay officials who had raped and abused kids. This was at least the third time Francis was contacted about this and the second time the names were given to him. Francis did nothing.

This institution is corrupt to its core. Burn it down, salt the earth, and let it serve as a warning about the dangers of too much religious authority.

 

[Lady Darnk Juniorette]

Thats a hell of a first post after a bit away, I DO SAY.

also people owe sinead o'connor an apology.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

No argument here.

Mars needs priests. Ship their asses to the red planet, let their god provide the miracle of survival necessities if he things they're worthy. And send all the other homophobic pink-penile-supremacist cult leaders like the Mormon elders and cultish southern baptist evangelistas with'm. And any one else that uses god-mythology in order to punish kind people merely for being different.

 

[EmpressOfCommunism]

Decentralize church authority and let the nuns run it collectively. No popes, no priests, no problems.

 

[Beebo Brink]

A victim traveled to Rome, met Francis, and handed him a letter that named 14 priests and lay officials who had raped and abused kids. This was at least the third time Francis was contacted about this and the second time the names were given to him. Francis did nothing.

I'm done with the apologists for Pope Francis. "Not as bad as the previous thugs" is not good enough for absolution.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Decentralize church authority and let the nuns run it collectively. No popes, no priests, no problems.

Nice try, but nuns have their own record of abuses. The corruption runs deeper than individuals or genders. It's the institution of the church itself that fosters and enables abuse.

 

[Han Held]

Nice try, but nuns have their own record of abuses.

Indeed.

 

[EmpressOfCommunism]

Nice try, but nuns have their own record of abuses. The corruption runs deeper than individuals or genders. It's the institution of the church itself that fosters and enables abuse.

Hence decentralization. Dissolve the institution as it is. Run it democratically. Mass accountability to the worshippers. Of course nuns abuse too, but it's impossible to deny the tyrannical papal and male only rule is an enormous part of the problem.

 

[danielravennest]

This institution is corrupt to its core. Burn it down, salt the earth, and let it serve as a warning about the dangers of too much religious authority.

Well, the Church burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for heresy, seems like a fitting punishment. Eye for an eye and all that.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Unfortunately, I don't think that will work.

The centralized, monolithic organization of the Church is, ironically, the only reason why we have an idea of how rampant and deep abuse by Catholic priests runs as a sum total worldwide. Other denominations' decentralized nature allows the size of the problem within those institutions to go largely unmeasured, because a pedophile Southern Baptist minister with a dozen victims only ever counts as a problem with that one single church he belonged to. Such churches are free to exchange predatory ministers as loosely associated peer congregations with no higher administrative authority able to be held responsible for what anyone else has done, and nobody tallying the numbers of abusers or victims denomination-wide.

 

[Khamon]

Dakota is correct. Baptists doctrine dictates the Priesthood of the Believer making each individual responsible for their own divine relationship. A church body has no power to control that direct personal connection and churches regulate themselves by democratic consensus.

The Southern Baptist Convention and regional associations have no authoritative pervue over local churches whatsoever.

Every member that supports the likes of Jerry Falwell does so of their own accord under no threat of excommunication.

edit: spelling

 

[Arilynn]

Thats a hell of a first post after a bit away, I DO SAY.

also people owe sinead o'connor an apology.

Yes, I thought it might not be best way to go, but I also want people to know about it. I read the WP article, skimming first because I needed to know what happened, and it made me furious.

There’s a lot here to object besides child rape. That sounds kind of funny, but I don’t intend it to be. I mean that there are other things that, standing alone, I would take issue with. The attacks, however, are so sickening that I can barely process it. Kids report being raped, some on a daily basis, and people do nothing? WTF? How? You would have to chain me to my garage to stop me from trying to help. And if I couldn’t help in some way, it would eat at me like acid.

How hard is it not to rape kids? How hard is it to kick to the police anyone accused of doing so? If the Catholic Church must continue, the man-only and celibacy requirements need to go. Not all celibate folks are unhealthy, but they are practically inviting men with problems regarding sexuality, women, social skills, etc. to sign up.

But that and the wholesale culling of the inept, corrupt, complacent, and predatory won’t happen. Francis was supposed to be better, a reformer. But, as Beebo said, enough of that. The whole institution is rotten, and it will continue to rot away. And there is basically nothing to be done about it.

 

[Free]

Yes, I thought it might not be best way to go

Fuck that. Welcome back, church burner.

 

[Cristiano]

I have been saying that the Catholic Church needs to be burnt to the fucking ground for quite awhile (much to my mother's displeasure on Facebook). It is a corrupt crime organization that cannot be redeemed. Sell off the property, the art and all the other treasures to support victims and dismantle the whole fucking thing and start putting them in jail. It cannot happen soon enough. The world would be a better place without them. Those who continue to support the Catholic Church have a lot to answer for.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

If the Catholic Church must continue, the man-only and celibacy requirements need to go. Not all celibate folks are unhealthy, but they are practically inviting men with problems regarding sexuality, women, social skills, etc. to sign up.

I'm not sure that would be the solution either. I've heard it a lot in the last few years, people implying that celibacy rules are somehow "turning priests into" pedos, or that many of them who abuse children aren't really pedophiles at all but have just settled for children because they're the only available option and the priest just needs sex from somewhere, anywhere; but I don't believe that for a second, because priests aren't supposed to be raping kids any more than having sex with consenting adults. Honestly, if you ask me, once a priest has decided to break the celibacy rule, he's basically freed himself to seek sex from wherever he prefers to get it from, and that includes adult men or women. In fact, we know for certain that many priests who break their vow choose to go this route; yesterday I happened to see this article on CNN, about the new revelation that the Catholic Church has secret, special policy guidelines on how to proceed when a priest ends up fathering a child due to an illicit affair. So the celibacy isn't making priests into pedophiles or abusers. They were already that way.

I don't think celibacy is the problem policy. I think absolution and the inviolability of the confessional is the problem. All a priest has to do is confess having molested a parishioner child to his boss-priest and just like that, curtain of secrecy immediately comes down; the church authorities are conveniently "prohibited" from notifying police - or cooperating, if the police find out anyway - and the most they can do is remove him from the parish and send him somewhere else. Usually to some different parish where he has to do some BS administrative penance for a while before getting back to his regular priest-job where he's interacting with kids again in a new place.

That's what I think needs to change. The Catholic Church needs to change its doctrine so that confessed sex crimes are no longer sheltered (and, by the way, secular law respects this protection too, which also has to change); AND needs to set a policy that priests who abuse parishioners get kicked TFO, period - not just receive some internal administrative discipline.

 

[detrius]

Hence decentralization. Dissolve the institution as it is. Run it democratically. Mass accountability to the worshippers. Of course nuns abuse too, but it's impossible to deny the tyrannical papal and male only rule is an enormous part of the problem.

Great idea, let's do this!

We should call it "Reformation".

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Cristiano]

Hence decentralization. Dissolve the institution as it is. Run it democratically. Mass accountability to the worshippers. Of course nuns abuse too, but it's impossible to deny the tyrannical papal and male only rule is an enormous part of the problem.

Alas, this is not much of a solution either. The Southern Baptist Church is basically 47,000 individually run churches and they have just had their own sex abuse scandal come to light:

20 years, 700 victims: Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Great idea, let's do this!

We should call it "Reformation".

What could possibly go wrong?

It could well be an improvement. I'm a Lutheran, a product of the first Reformation. And, as far as I know, we don't have all of the problems prevalent in the Catholic Church.

 

[Sid]

Decentralize church authority and let the nuns run it collectively. No popes, no priests, no problems.

Go talk to the children that have been abused by nuns in the past/

 

[detrius]

Lutheran

Imminent Godwin detected. Abandon thread!