The Pope was intimately involved in covering up abuse - Page 3

I have to call bullshit on your "prove to me you're not a terrorist" point. There is a *huge* substantive difference. Those who practice terrorism and even radical mosques exist outside of Islam as an organization. The organization itself has, I believe, distanced itself from violent acts. Whereas in this situation, the problem *is* the organization. In fact, it is the very leadership of the organization. So I think you are overstretching your case.

I can see where you bristle at what I'm saying, I really can. But let me break it down further. I'm talking about having semi-specific conversations with someone who is defending their religion in light of this particular heinous issue. I have to take issue when you characterize what I said as "you support the church, therefore you support pedophiles". That's not true. What I'm saying is that can't take anyone seriously who thinks that those priests who engage in pedophilia should be allowed anywhere near children in any way, shape, or form. There are probably more nuanced ways of getting at that information...and it could certainly be done in a more deft and polite manner than what I suggested, but that's the core of it. Once we can get past that, I'm willing to talk about infallibility, church heirarchy, whether the act is a sin or a crime...whatever.

So while I think that anger and frustration may be getting the better of my manners, I'm very comfortable with the core of my point. I'm perfectly willing to listen to anything you have to say in defense of your religion if we can agree that old men should not be raping little boys. Or to put it more politely, "Do you think that the priests in question, those who have engaged in sex with children against their will, should remain in any position where they have contact with, and authority over, children?". If the answer is no, then we can move on and argue until the cows come home. If not, then it's no use talking to you for any number of possible reasons.

I'll reiterate the statement that I'm defending here:

Impolitic? Yes. But I think justifiably so. I'm not asking catholics to prove that they're not pedophile supporters. I'm saying that If you can't agree that kids should be kept clear of those priests, then we've got nothing to talk about.

Removing the celibacy vow will never happen. Removing the 'sex is icky' from the Catholic church's teachings would be like asking a Led Zeppelin cover band never to play Stairway To Heaven.

Apparently they're right. There is no reason why these rapist priests and the ones who cover up their crimes shouldn't be arrested and tried in a court of law. And yet, here we are- allowing the Pope to put a spin on what is being treated as little more than a political scandal.

That speaks to my previous point. The very fact that all these religions are based on a book that needs to be interpreted is hilarious.

How many day-to-day Catholics do you think are going to say yes to the above? It's freakin' absurd. You aren't differentiating between the belief of Catholicism and the hierarchy of Catholicism.

Would you start every discussion about religion with a Muslim by asking about terrorism? With a Buddhist and sarin attacks? With a Protestant about Northern Ireland?

Sadly, I agree. All of the people involved in the cover up need to hauled in immediately. The Cardinals need to be questioned. And Ratzinger should be brought in as Ratzinger and not as the Pope.

The hypocrisy here is that if this was, say, the head of a major corporation, you'd have massive outcry for boycotts, immediate termination and prosecution. Most likely led by a lot of the same people who are saying about this scandal, "Yeah, but..."

Belief in Catholicism necessitates a belief in the heirarchy of Catholicism. There's the stumbling block.

It's reeeeeal easy to speak with moral authority on this thing. Didn't molest any kids? Check. There's your moral authority.

If it weren't so intertwined with the hierarchy you might be able to justify some loyalty to the Catholic Church, but the way the Church is set up to question those people is to question the Church itself.

I think being a grown man who cries at television ads robs you of any claim to superiority, Nordling.

Yeah, because tearing up = molestation of kids.

You should quit that whole "communicating with others" thing. You're not good at it.

Whoa. That misses the mark spectacularly.

But isn't the problem that, in order for this to happen, it's Catholics (yes, even the non molest-y ones) themselves who need to face up to it and get it done. In much the same way that if anyone believes the republican party is somehow salvageable (or even deserving of it), it's the 'real conservatives' (the supposed core spirit of the party) that need to take action.

Andrew Sullivan's blog is probably the best informed on this subject - he's righteously angry as a Catholic himself and he's scouring pretty much every news source on this.

Celibacy has nothing to do with sex. The vow of celibacy is to never marry. The vow of chastity is the vow to not have sex.

The leadership of the Catholic church was only barred from marriage after the Borgia Pope. That Pope's kid is the figure that Machiavelli used as his model of the ideal monarch in The Prince. That should tell you why Catholics decided letting the leadership have kids and personal claims to property was a bad idea back when it was the most powerful organization in the West and total controller over information.

Now, the Roman Catholic Church is no longer any of those things--no matter how hard it tries to ignore that--and priests in the Western Rite who convert to Catholicism from Episcopalianism can stay married. Priests in the Eastern rite of the Roman Catholic Church have always been allowed to marry.

I think the celibacy vow would have been gone by now if JPII hadn't been immediately succeeded by the biggest cunt the Catholic church managed to produce in the last century. Celibacy and gays are the two things that the Catholic leadership like to deflect the heat of the sex abuse scandals toward. If you took celibacy off the table and stopped demonizing gays, then the old hetero guys who actually do all the evil shit in the organization would actually have to take responsibility for their actions.

Ratzinger really is like a fucking Star Wars villain come to life. You just can't go from being a Nazi as a little kid to being an adult man who lets some guy who fucked 200 deaf kids in the ass off the hook because his crimes are no longer a criminal threat to your organization without being painted with the "evil as fuck" brush.

I would certainly bring the conversation around to "do you think the leaders of terrorist cells should be moved to different mosques instead of being criminally prosecuted" as soon as possible if the conversation was *about* the global leader of Islam shielding criminals from prosecution, hiding the evidence, and telling the world that it is an internal matter that is being taken seriously. In that case, I think it would be entirely reasonable to begin the debate by determining if the person you're talking to is a rational human being, or someone who will relentlessly cling to dogma and doctrine at the expense of common sense.

But essentially, you're right. It is absurd. I'm unnecessarily complicating a glib comment made in frustration. But equating it with insisting that I am not differentiating between this and badgering innocents about condemning *intentionally violent* attacks by fringe elements within their religions is equally absurd.

Man, if only Roman Polanski was a Catholic Priest. Then the Vatican would have Nordling's full support.

Yes. And mine too. Because the systematic abuse of thousands and the subsequent actions of the hierarchy to assure that the perpetrators remained free and unpunished is totally the same with what Polanski did. Absolutely equivalent.

Not marrying implies that you won't have sex, given that it's considered a sin to have sex outside of marriage in the Catholic church.

If Ratzinger had directed Jeepers Creepers we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Hahaha we have to draw Polanski into this? Hilarious.

I've said I thought Polanski's case should be dismissed. Not for him so much as that the woman he raped could get the peace she's asked for for many years. He should have never run. The systemic support of rape and torture of thousands of kids is completely different. And the fact that I have to point this out to you... fuck off.

No. Not really. You're badgering innocents regardless of what you want them to state outright they are innocent of doing (not doing?). Those who believe in Catholicism and haven't molested children (or covered it up) are innocent and to take them to task for what someone else (even if it's the leader of their faith) did is patently absurd.

No. The average Catholic couldn't care less about the hierarchy beyond who's Pope. The hierarchy has nothing to do with faith.

His thoughts on the emotional and sexual development of the priests in question raised some inconvenient sympathy for them in my mind. I still think they should be put into the justice system without question, but damn if he didn't make me feel sorry for them at least a little bit.

http://chud.com/forum/showpost.php?p...3&postcount=53

The priests should have just fled the country and enjoyed hugely successful careers and won Oscars. That would have been suffering enough.

Yeah, as a fellow Polanski sympathizer, allow me to explain the difference:

Benedict XVI: Former Nazi who gave aid and comfort to serial child buggerers and torturers for decades. That is, an evil man who does evil things because evil is an essential part of his nature. He has also used his position of power to keep a lid on most of his evil actions for decades.

Roman Polanski: Former Holocaust victim and husband to one of the victims in one of the most famous mass murders in US history. He did a horrible thing because being in massive amounts of pain leads you to do stupid, self-destructive things. Unlike Ratzinger, he also initially surrendered to police and stood public trial for the horrible thing he did.

Does anyone else see the difference here?

Like the Energizer bunny of false analogies. Keeps going and going and going ...

Polanski is the modern equivalent to Godwin these days it seems.

LOL self-destructive

Pope Nordling

Let's say, you're suicidal, get in a car, drive it off the cliff and the car lands on someone on the beach below. Are you responsible for what happened to the other person? Yes. Did you have malicious intent concerning the other person? That is, were your actions designed to harm the other person? No.

The difference between Polanski and Ratzinger in the difference between the guy in the first case and a guy who decides to take his Hummer down a drive on a busy sidewalk because the sound of crunching bones gets him hard.

You're a fucking idiot. What happened in Polanski's case is nothing in comparison. You're comparing a duck to an orange. Do I think Polanski should have stayed and faced the music? Sure I do. The various facts of his case (a judge going against the prosecutor, his victim asking the case to be dismissed) are much different. He never should have run. There are variables here that are quite different than a gigantic political and religious organization keeping individuals from facing the law. Polanski fled. But he was at least adjudicated. The priests - unlike Polanski - have never been in any court of law and remain unjudged by any political authority. But go ahead, spin it however you like.

Do I get my own Popemobile?

Pope Nordling XIII, amirite?

Oh lordy, I can't believe I'm further derailing this, but-
That's hardly an apt comparison. Drugging and raping a girl requires a need to directly involve some else in your behavior, unlike accidentally squashing someone with your car. A better comparison is inviting a 13 year old girl into your car under false pretenses before you drive it off the cliff.
And then Pope Nordling comes along and buggers her in the hindquarters.

So, Polanski's penis is the car and the 13 year-old girl's vagina and anus are the unsuspecting beach-goers below the cliff? Polanski had no idea where his penis was going to land? Had the 13 year-old been standing six inches to the left, this whole messy affair could have been avoided? Bad analogy, man.

No no no, Pope Nordling drives the penis car.

Pope Nordling had better hope he's got some filmmaking chops, or he is FUCKED in the court of public opinion (or at least on the CHUD MBs).

I like Chuchulain, but that's the worst analogy I've ever read. More like anal-ogy.

We normally don't hold mentally unstable people responsible for their actions. You have to be rational to be praiseworthy or blameworthy for your personal actions.

I don't think anyone is going to argue that a Holocaust victim who goes on a bender after he finds out some hippies carved his pregnant wife up with his own kitchenware is rational.

That's what I think makes it an apt comparison. Neither person is blameworthy for what happened but both are responsible.

Bwahahahahahaha.

I'm still trying to understand how a case of one man with entirely different circumstances WHO ACTUALLY DID GO TO COURT compares to thousands of incidents regarding the Catholic Church. I'd like to understand how in any way I condoned what Polanski did. If you could find that, boy, I'd sure like to see it.

Until then, fuck off.

Nordling: That was a cheap shot, and unfounded. I apologize.

I've been staying quiet with my thoughts on this, because I'm so angry and frustrated by it all that to explain how I feel would redefine tl;dr, but maybe I'll try to put something together in the next day or two.

But yeah, this was a bad time to consider going back to church. And I don't think I'm going to go until Benedict abidicates, or is dead.

Everyone: Avoid the "holy water" in Pope Nordling's cathedral.

Thanks, accepted, I apologize for what I said as well.

I have a lot of practicing Catholic friends, including a few who are planning on becoming priests. From what they've told me, the standards for joining the priesthood are incredibly high now and the screening process for new priests is much more intense. For example, one of the guys I know was told that he couldn't begin the process of studying for priesthood until he dated more (which sounds a little ridiculous, but I get what they're saying...they want to make sure you're really sure, and not joining the priesthood because you can't talk to girls...or guys...etc.).

So there's that.

She has the same bad understanding of the concept, like much of the does? Most people misuse the terms "valid" and "immaculate conception"--they use that mostly when they mean "virgin birth" and want to sound like they read--as well. Popular misuse doesn't change the meaning of the language.