The Pope Covered Up Pedophile Priests

[Xantar]

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.

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Xantar

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.

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.

[Xantar]

Originally Posted by TheGame

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.

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.

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Xantar

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.

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.