Re: The Pope Covered Up Pedophile Priests
 

I think the Catholic culture is run like some exclusive fraternity or gang or secret society. It's a bit of a Chicken/Egg scenario for me though, I'm not sure what came first: being a priest, or wanting to put your hoo-ha in little boy's bums.

In other words I'm not entirely convinced that Celibacy is the exact problem, although it may be a contributor. I'm not convinced because like all "vows/commandments/rules" I'm sure it is easily and often broken.

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You don't hear about it because after WWII the Jews learned to keep their mouth's shut. :lolz:

I kid...I kid....I have nothing against Jews and I think you have a valid point.

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Where did he ever say it was only Catholics that molested children? He didn't. He just asked if there's been well publicized case of a rabbi molesting HUNDREDS of children and having the highest authority of the Jewish religion cover it up, and there probably hasn't been. The Catholic church seems to be alone on that front, no matter how much you want to defend it.

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Ok, let's try this one more time:

I asked "Show me the Jewish rabbi who was raping or molesting children and then had his crimes covered up by the very highest authority in the Jewish religion itself." That second part is the key there. I'm not saying only Catholics molest children, and you will not be able to find a quote from me saying anything resembling that statement. As you would know if you actually read this thread, we're talking about the cover up. The actual rape is bad enough, but things get especially repulsive when supposedly moral people in positions of authority conspire to lie and deceive the people they are supposedly ministering to in order to protect people who probably aren't worth protecting. And speaking only for myself, maybe I'm naive but I was shocked to find that the corruption extended all the way up to the Pope himself.

Now if you still don't get it, ask Strangler to explain it to you. His profound cynicism about Catholicism has (unfortunately) allowed him to understand things more accurately than I have.

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I think the rates of child molestation probably would go down....

I have 2 commentaries I won't delve deeply into, but here they are:

1) I strongly believe there is a lot of undocumented homosexuality that goes on within the Priesthood (and within the Nun thing). And maybe I'm way off.

2) This may sound dick-ish but I always question why people want to become Clergy. All I ever hear are the canned responses, "I want to spread the word of God," or, "God showed me this path," and both response lack motives or broader behavioral/social considerations.

So yeah. I think there is a lot going on here and the simple solution is stricter screening for priests, harder punishments, and less immunity.

Or if you take a vow of Celibacy let's just chop off their man parts! /I kid I kid...again....

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@Xantar: Maybe other religions are better at covering it up? I don't think many other religions have an equivelant to the pope... and I don't see it making national news every day that any other religion's 'leaders' are making an active effort to sell out each and every person who is in a high position molesting children.

Men kill, men cheat on their wives, men lie, men steal, men rape, men become preists, men become pastors, men take high positions in any given religion's structure... Just because they're preists, doesn't make them exempt from being human.

With that said, I'm sure that there's plenty of other religions that have perverted people in positions of power... either by their own standards, ot by the standards set in by law. And I'm sure there's plenty of stories about it.

So... to answer your 'point' about how the Catholic church seems to be the only corrupt one...

Here's what I think the real issue is.. The religion has too large of a power stucture, and they became too large of a group among western/free nations. They managed to make themselves into political tools, and in the effort to appear "perfect" they decided to go the route of privacy whenever something happened that would make the church look bad. (Much like many do in politics)

So when someone would report to the Pope that a guy was raping children, he thought that banning this person from the church or making them answer to the law would actually make the church look bad.. so he decided to cover it up instead. And as most political figures find out.. trying to cover things up usually ends up hurting your cause more in the end once the truth comes out.

The celibacy thing is irrelevant in my opinion.. The problem is that it's a large political secret society that doesn't want to answer to anyone, and wants to appear to be "perfect".

Re: The Pope Covered Up Pedophile Priests
 

Game, I think you're contradicting yourself a little bit. As you pointed out, at least part of the problem here is that the Catholic Church has a huge (international) power structure. And that's also the reason why it's better at covering up scandals than any other religion. In my own Buddhist practice, if the monk that my family works with abuses children, no elder monk will come by to hide him away in a monastery or swap him out with another monk because there is no elder monk at all. I'm not not going to claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of religions, but of the ones I know of, none has a central command authority whom everybody is supposed to answer to. Religious practice is generally very local.

If you look through the news, you can actually find plenty of cases of priests or monks of various religions being caught going to strip clubs, driving while drunk, having affairs and all kinds of other things. I repeat: they are caught. Because there is nobody to hide them away. And when something like that happens, it's considered notable but not a huge scandal because there has been no conspiracy to cover up the crime.

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I understand these facts, and I don't really disagree with you.. I guess the point I was trying to make is that what's wrong with the religion isn't that it gives the priests the incentive to rape the little boys... the problem is that they're trying to uphold some impossible to reach reputation of being "perfect" by hiding the fact that there is immorality within their church.

The divide here seems to be that people believe the religion gives the priests the incentive to molest children because of celibacy, and because of the position of unquestioned power they hold over the children. I believe that the problem is that they're trying to hide the immorality opposed to addressing it with real punishment for political reasons... because god forbid there be a story about the Pope admitting to making a mistake and removing a preist from their position of power.

Maybe I should do a poll... if you were forced to be celibate and your only option for sex was 10-12 year old boys, would you do it? Pretty sure everyone would vote no.

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At the very least, that's not what I'm saying. What I suggested earlier is that if the Cardinals had been fathers, they would not have been able to look the other way in cases of pedophilia. Never mind how bad it makes the Church look. Having children changes you, and if you have a bunch of old virgins gathered in a room disconnected from every day life, they are going to come to very different decisions about what to do with scandals like these compared with men (and women) who have families.

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That's true, but when you say that, it implies that people with families and who aren't disconnected from every day life like preists do not molest children... but they still do. And I'm sure there are plenty of preists (if not the VAST majority) who are old virgins and who are disconnected who have never molested a child.

Children will get molested no matter what, regardless of environment..

The incentive to keep it under wraps for political/reputation reasons is the real problem. That's why they turn the other way.. Not because they're freaks who are disconnected from reality, and somehow rationalized why their brothers are touching on little kids.

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No. I'm saying people with families who aren't disconnected from every day life do not cover up pedophiles. Or at least they are much less likely to do so over the course of a hundred years. Come on, Game. I know you can follow this.

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Once again, the problem is you're making large generalizations. Yes, normal families do cover up pedophiles. There are MANY stories out there about dads/step-dads molesting children, and the mother knowing and doing nothing about it.

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Look, instead of going back over everything step by baby step so that you get what I'm saying, let's just do this:

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict) was assigned the task of covering up pedophile priests, moving them to other jurisdictions, hiding evidence and so on. To do this, he had to think that it was ok for little boys to be traumatized for life with no possibility of justice.

Now, would he have been more likely to do this if he was a father or less likely? I know it's still possible he would have done it, but my question is do you think that makes him more likely or less likely?

Now consider that there are hundreds of Cardinals in the Catholic church. So go through each of them and ask the same question: is that man more or less likely to stay silent about pedophile priests if he is himself the father of children? Remember that all it takes is for a few of them to blow the whistle on the church.

I'm not saying that all fathers are saints. I'm saying that if Catholic priests had all been family men, they would have been less likely to try to hide pedophiles from justice. Yes, it's a generalization. That's why I use words like "more likely" or "less likely" instead of "will."

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Just to clarify MY opinion on this...

I don't think that the Cath Chirch incentivizes or recruits molesters. What I said was that the priesthood is attractive to people with sexual compulsions that are beyond the norm exactly because of celibacy and the promise of handing one's sexuality over to God.

They view it as a means to cure themselves of these desires that they hate and keep secret, but in the end many fail (many may succeed, but we don't hear about them). This is why I think we hear about so many instances of molestation in the Cath Church as opposed to other faiths.

They want to be good and godly, but in the end perhaps they are setting themselves up for failure.

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I don't know if it is more or less likely... has a study been done on that?

I'm kidding by the way.. Though I don't think him having a family would have solved the problem, this is a top down problem caused by them chosing to keep immoral action secret opposed to openly punishing people for it.

I that he could have thought that way, but somehow I don't think he's that sick...I think that he probably thought that allowing that information to get out would do more to hurt the catholic church then it would to help their cause. Just because you're the one who hides the evidence doesn't mean you're that you agree with the crime. Some people just simply feel that letting things get out on the table, even if it's the right thing to do, can hurt their cause more then it can help it.

I'm sure the priests were slaped on the wrist, in a very secret way.. but they weren't about to let someone else handle it.

Just like the whole torture situation in the US. They didn't want to release certain pictures. certain information, and did not want to prosecute the people who gave the orders. Is that because they agree with the crime? No.. It's because some of those pictures, and some of that information can destroy america's reputation and anger our enemies/allies further, even if we do the right thing and put the people who allowed it in jail.

That's just how I see it.. yes little things could change up how much the molestation occurs, but the thing that needs to change the most is how they handle people who commit the crimes. Because as I pointed out a few times, the crimes will still happen no matter what incentive structure surrounds a person.

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There was a report on NPR maybe a year ago about Jewish rabbis molesting boys in some Jewish communal bathes I think in New York. -- Found it:

Abuse and cover-up by the Hasidic Jewish community. It's amazing what power does to control people.

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Hey, look at that.

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Good old religion. ;)

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Religion: Creatin' pedophiles since the dawn of time.


The Pagans had it right.
No single God, no desire for molestation.

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Well, ya know, if you had just given me the story that manasecret just posted, then that would have been the end of it. But I understand it's easier to make fun of my penis size than it is to actually read my question. It's all good.

Anyway, not asking rhetorically and really looking to be enlightened: who is the highest authority of Hassidic Jews? The article says that Hassidism is broken up into a bunch of small groups spread around the world, but I don't know if each of those is considered autonomous or if they all answer to some (human) authority.

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I'm glad we agree.

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Good question, but sorry I can't answer it, I don't know much about them and their power structures. On that note, others here mentioned this, but how many religions out there have a power structure that goes as high up as the pope? I reckon just a handful.

So I don't know if this story of Hasidic Jews meets your criterion for being like the Pope covering things up, but it is quite similar with high-ups getting caught and then the organization tending to cover it up.

But really, I have to point out again -- it's like a South Park episode: "So, on a scale of 1 to 10 -- how bad was the touching of your son's penis by the rabbi? I mean, there was no up and down motion, right? Just some side to side motion, maybe a little tongue. So, I mean, come on -- 2... 3?"

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I dunno how I'd feel about a priest giving me a blowjob. I'd probably feel like this:

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Did anyone know that the then-future pope Joseph Ratzinger was being sued in a Houston federal court some years ago for international conspiracy to obstruct justice? And that he was then elected pope just so he could get diplomatic immunity as head-of-state?

That's what Daniel Shea, the man behind the suit, believes, and I think I believe.

The Man Who Sued the Pope

Joseph Ratzinger needs to resign. He's poisoning the Catholic Church from within.

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In fairness, these claims are coming from the plaintiff in a lawsuit. Of course he's going to assume the worst. Also, while I do believe that Ratzinger covered up the scandal, I also believe the many accounts that he has worked to reform the situation from the inside. Does that make the cover-up better? No. But understanding how the mind of the Vatican works, I'm not surprised by their actions.

What are the laws of a nation compared to the laws of God and His retribution/absolution? The rulings of a government court system mean nothing to them.

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The rulings of a government court system does mean something to them, otherwise there would be no need for a cover-up.

While certainly the plaintiff, Daniel Shea is going to assume the worst, you have to admit it's a good conspiracy theory with some hard evidence pointing to the conclusion that he was elected Pope to give him diplomatic immunity.

But, as far as the two letters that the article references -- Ratzinger's letter to all Catholic bishops from May 18, 2001, and the 48-year-old document Crimen Sollicitationis it cites in its footnotes -- those are hard facts. I'd like to read them in full myself (I believe both are in Latin, so it makes it slightly more difficult, having to rely on someone's translation), but if they're at all what the article makes them sound like, it sure sounds like a cover-up to me, and across international borders, which I'm guessing makes it an international conspiracy to obstruct justice.

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IMO they covered it up to avoid losing their flock, not because of government legal action.

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Kind of a chicken or the egg situation -- if it weren't for legal action (and media outcry), would they have to worry about losing their flock? But yes, I agree they are more worried about losing their flock, whatever the cause of that may be.

I see what you're saying, in their mind, they felt like they could fix it internally without courts getting involved and mussing it up. Can't say that makes breaking the law any better. Especially with their track record of "fixing" it by slapping priests on the wrist and transferring them somewhere else.

Also to note, from my Catholic education and exposure, as I remember it Catholics are supposed to follow man's law as well. Though I never quite understood the quandary when man's law doesn't jive with god's law...

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Of course. Legally, the Pope could have an affair (or be gay), no problem there. But that doesn't mean it's ok with the followers of the church.