Politics: A new beginning

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sgtclub

That said, please explain to me the Church's stance on, for instance, exposing the pedifiles in its ranks. As I see it, the Church cannot do so because, if it did, it would be subject to crippling law suits that would leave it on the verge of bankruptcy if not bankrupt, and in turn, powerless. So instead of (a) restituting those many (hundreds, thousands) of people whose lives have been utterly distroyed and (b) preventing the further distruction of the lives of the truly innocent, the Church chooses to be uncooperative in order to stay solvent/powerful.

I think the hierarchy had three issues: (i) in their view, Church decisions should be the product of deliberation by the hierarchy, NOT public pressure and discussion; if they changed their way of doing things because of public outcry, precedent would be set for the future; (ii) their view was that hiding these problems was the best for the institution, just as College administrators 30 years ago refused to publicly acknoweldge that rape occurred on their campuses even though everyone knew it; and (iii) once you remove pedophiles from the priesthood you have to replace them, and there is a severe shortage of priests. On the third point, if this shortage keeps getting worse, must the hierarchy, sooner or later, turn to women because they have no other choice? On the second point, I believe we have already seen some progress and that we will slowly see more movement within the Church to recognize that these things are better dealt with and not denied. It is a process that colleges went through a couple decades ago, somewhat reluctantly, and that the Church is only now getting around to.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Thanks, but I do enough defending the indefensible between 9 and 5.



The Church exists in the context of a society. That society has Lemon-tested, Scalia-approved laws that require it to report such abuse when it becomes known to it outside of a penitential sacrament like confession. DHRO v. Smith established that generally applicable, religion-neutral criminal laws that have the effect of burdening even a religious practice (which, joking aside, pedophilia is not) are perfectly valid.

I say, tough darts for the Catholic Church. There's no "but this will put me in b/k" defense to mandatory reporting. You've got to rat out the pedophile and roll the dice with a frolic/non-ratification defense.

I'm a little confused. It sounds like you are agreeing with me. So is your quibble solely with the fact that I characterize such actions as evil?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I think the hierarchy had three issues: (i) in their view, Church decisions should be the product of deliberation by the hierarchy, NOT public pressure and discussion; if they changed their way of doing things because of public outcry, precedent would be set for the future;

READ: They (the hiarchy) would lose power.

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (ii) their view was that hiding these problems was the best for the institution

Read: If they didn't hide these things, they (the hiarchy) would lose power.

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (iii) once you remove pedophiles from the priesthood you have to replace them, and there is a severe shortage of priests. On the third point, if this shortage keeps getting worse, must the hierarchy, sooner or later, turn to women because they have no other choice?.

So they made a judgement call that it was better for the Church to have enough priests, even if those priests were evil criminals, than it would be to have a priest shortage? This is truly disgusting. And taken too its logical conclusion, without enough priests, the Church would lose its significance, at least in those areas where they could not field a pulpit, which is the same as saying, you guessed it, they would lose power.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I'm a little confused. It sounds like you are agreeing with me. So is your quibble solely with the fact that I characterize such actions as evil?

OK, someone is going to have to step forward to defend the pedophiles around here, or it's going to be another tedious day of agreement on the board. Fringey? Bilmore? Who wants to take a stab?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sgtclub
READ: They (the hiarchy) [SIC] would lose power. ^3

Exactly. Though I might expand it to say "they and those who look like them" to leave room for all the future Cardinal Laws, who are, of course, most welcome.

And so I am a member of a Church whose good works are done mostly despite our leadership rather than under the direction of our leadership.

But remember, the survey showed my own belief system is least compatible with Catholicism.

G^3

[Someone's Evil Twin]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
OK, someone is going to have to step forward to defend the pedophiles around here, or it's going to be another tedious day of agreement on the board. Fringey? Bilmore? Who wants to take a stab?

Not a difficult task.

First, there are only three or four major serial pedophiles at issue here. Most of the priests involved were 24 year old gay priests who had an affair with a 17 year old parisioner; this is the sort of thing that may be regretable but is certainly not the kind of horrible act the few serial pedophiles engaged in.

Of course the serial pedophiles created many more victims than the larger number of priests who simply had trouble keeping it in their pants. But here the Catholic Church is having fifty years of problems come out in just one or two years, so it looks much worse than it is. And only one or two cases involve serial pedophiles who were protected by the hierarchy.

And if someone doesn't like the Catholic Church's position on women, gays, condoms or anything else, become an Episcopalean. Why the hell would someone who disagrees with the Church on such things be Catholic in the first place?

(Bilmore's name deleted)

[Someone's Evil Twin]

What do you guys have against pederasty?

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Interesting that the GOP is so scared of Clark that they are labeling him as Clinton's candidate and rolling out the sleaze now (Hugh Shelton's comments repeated endlessly, etc.). Apparently the comparison of a real soldier with Bush's flight-suit photo op doesn't help the President.

also --

I don't think technical violations of somehing as arcane as campaign finance regulations really counts as corruption. Let Clark make his paid speeches (prtisan jab alert) -- unlike some candidates, he hasn't been spending the past eight years sucking the tools of every wealthy business interest in the county -- and he hasn't made himself wealthy by using his political power for personal gain a la Bush in Texas-- so give him a break.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Exactly. Though I might expand it to say "they and those who look like them" to leave room for all the future Cardinal Laws, who are, of course, most welcome.

And so I am a member of a Church whose good works are done mostly despite our leadership rather than under the direction of our leadership.

But remember, the survey showed my own belief system is least compatible with Catholicism.

G^3

I can't believe you "SIC'd" me.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
And so I am a member of a Church whose good works are done mostly despite our leadership rather than under the direction of our leadership.

Or, as I heard longtime church-goer say once, [IRISH ACCENT]"Sonn, the Charch is a deevoyne eenstitooshun roone by eedjits."[/IRISH ACCENT]

Clubby, my post was in large agreement with your views. However, your "READ:" posts are generally huge extrapolations that depart from the quoted poster's views, and this was no exception. It was not clear you were articulating your own position, and it was certainly clear you weren't actually restating G3's.

In a perfect world, the "Read:" and "Translation:" posts would be reserved for lampooning a poster's view by reducing it to the absurd, not for inserting your own views. But maybe I'm being a Timmy here.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Or, as I heard longtime church-goer say once, [IRISH ACCENT]"Sonn, the Charch is a deevoyne eenstitooshun roone by eedjits."[/IRISH ACCENT]

[PETTY]Now that you and Deuced have both appropriated my insert-something-other-than-enhanced-mode-codes-in-the-brackets trick, I want to take the credit.[/PETTY]

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
It was not clear you were articulating your own position, and it was certainly clear you weren't actually restating G3's.

In a perfect world, the "Read:" and "Translation:" posts would be reserved for lampooning a poster's view by reducing it to the absurd, not for inserting your own views. But maybe I'm being a Timmy here.

Well, Timmy, if it was clear that I wasn't restating G3's, whose views would I be expressing?

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Well, Timmy, if it was clear that I wasn't restating G3's, whose views would I be expressing?

You could have been parodying either yourself or him.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I can't believe you "SIC'd" me.

I'm a SIC boy. Cf. Timmy Bd.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
You could have been parodying either yourself or him.

The scary thing is, he basically sounded like me when Drunk.

Instead of "Read", perhaps we could preface those sentance with "Slur" and put a [STUMBLE]belch[/STUMBLE]* after.


* credit to Ty for ripping this idea off from somewhere else, like a good lawyer