http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4066349.stm
These old guys are supposed to NEVER have sex, yet they fuck some 100 times more often than me (a pity they do that without consent and with kids).
The priests, who were supposed to be celibate, got too horny, and their passion manifested itself in the worst possible way (child molestation/rape). So, these priests probably weren’t cut out for the priesthood and would have been better off marrying and not entering the priesthood at all.
<i> Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.</i> - 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 (New International Version)
face palm
These people were an embarassment for both the Catholic Church AND humanity in general. Hiryuu’s right; if you can’t control yourself, you shouldn’t be in the priesthood.
I’m amazed those people even thought they deserved to be priests in the first place.
And this shit happens all over the world. The head of one of my country’s most recognized charity organizations, father Grassi, was accused of child rape a few years back.
One of the things that strike me as odd is that 90% of the time, these cases are always about a male child being raped. Is there any psychological influence on clergymen that turns them homosexual? Besides from the one turning them into pedophiles, I mean.
I send you out a sheep amidst the wolves is what they should tell kids when they enter church. But what else can you expect from the blind leading the blind?
This should serve as a sign to people that those who tell them what their morals should be (like with gays) are nothing more than sinful hypocrits like those that sit in their congregations that don’t apply what they say they believe. Sadly, that would be asking too much of species.
On the subject of religion, people oughta read “God’s Debris” by Scott Adams. Just to see what’ll happen.
<i>For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.</i> - Romans 3:23
No Christian (or any other person) can claim themself to be perfect, because nobody is. I don’t think that that gives you or anybody else the right to condemn them by calling them hypocrits. Some are, because they do not make an effort to follow the Christian way of life, nor do they believe what they profess to believe but many do try their best, and inevitably fall short, because they’re, after all, only human.
On the gay issue (since you decided to bring it up for some reason… possibly as a cheap shot against Christianity or religion as a whole?), that is a HUGE problem with Christianity today. But, here’s an idea: instead of saying Christianity is to blame, take a deeper look at the issue. From a Christian standpoint, which is obviously not yours, only God (who is the perfect being) has the right to judge or condemn another person (we cannot because we are imperfect). “Christians” that do so are contradicting their own belief system. Now, Christians believe homosexuality is a sin, yes. However, as the quote I brought up in this post said, from a Christian standpoint, EVERYBODY sins. There’s no way around it. So homosexuals are sinners, but so am I, so are you, and so is everybody. So they’re no better or worse than anybody else, really. Condemnation of homosexuals is really an anti-Christian stance. Now, that doesn’t entail acceptance of homosexuality, but it does entail tolerance and love toward gays, and everybody else for that matter.
I’m not defending the priests’ behavior, or “Bible-thumping”, I’m just trying to deflect some of the heat away from Christianity as a whole, because I knew that it wouldn’t be long until people started attacking it for some reason.
I attack essentially all religions because even though religions differ, how they’re used doesn’t differ. Having said that, I wasn’t attacking christianity as a whole when I talked about hypocrits. The point I wanted to make was that people hold priests, representatives of a religion, as community/opinion leaders and the likes because of the religion and that is a very bad idea because its not because you are part of a religion or hold a position in a religion (no pun intended) that you have any more importance than someone else. But people don’t do that. They are sheep and they follow the shepherd, quite ironically. And what situation is that? It is the blind leading the blind. People look to God for help and answers only to fail to realize that God helps those who help themselves.
The gay issue is the primordial example of what is wrong with the system as we are in a country that is supposed to endorse tolerance and equal rights and we see the involvement of the Church in the affairs of the State and that is quite wrong, not only on a moral standpoint, but from the standpoint of what the religion is supposed to push forward. While I agree about what Christianity is supposed to push forward with tolerance, the problem as in all religions is that people are not models of God, but God is a model after themselves. So really , when I blast the religious, I blast the religious and not the religion.
The road is narrow, the horizon wide
And they say what’s waiting on the other side is so rewarding and the ultimate prize
But what good is something if you can’t have it until you die?
Desperate tenacious clinging like a grain of sand watching its foundation wash away
Drunk with the assertions they know they can’t defend
Confident that they might live again.
Live again! Live again! Would you give it all up to live again?
Live again! Live again! Would you give it all up to live again?
I know I would. Be careful please Sinistral. Though you may not understand and certainly don’t agree with the very core of Christian faith (God GIVES salvation, and nothing can be done to earn or lose it), there are many who do. I know many different types of Christians that cover a wide span of actions and views. There are of course a countless number who use thier religion as a means to condemn others or justify themselves. There are those who would twist and corrupt anything to gain power over others, even in a short term social sense or a post mortem sense.
The difference between oppressive Christians and the oppressors of other systems (including the science and logic which you use to condemn) is that the backing for religion is one of faith, where as you have an experiment that you can do and prove yourself right. Proof of course is a funny word, because countless studies have shown thousands of bullshit facts and were backed based simply on the scientific merit of it all. Studies have been misused and abused just as much as any other system. If you can dare to judge all those who are religious on the basis of what individuals do in terms of auctoritatial abuse, then I can condemn all scientists for what countless individuals do under a faux science line of reasoning. Might I mention that science was once used to prove that northern and western Europeans were in fact smarter than the rest of the world?
Don’t get too high up on your horse, because once you get to start narrowing things down and pointing out how certain groups can’t stain the image of all science, then so can I in reference to religion.
And Hiryuu, not all Christians believe that homosexuality is a sin. The pastor of my church is a lesbian. At least a third of the congregation is of the non-hetero variety.
At times like these I really want to thank Luther for his reorganization…
Since, over here, priests may marry, and GASP even women can be priests! How’s that for religious freedom?
The sad part is, these isolated cases will quickly be applied to the righteous 99.9999% of all priests. It’s already happened in this thread.
Ihe problem is that it’s not isolated, Hades. It’s happened in almost every major city, and who knows how many small ones. And the church even covered it up by transfering the priests around. Cardinal Mahoney here in LA even released a public aplogy at one point I believe. It’s not just one or 2 cases. While the vast majority of priests are probably good and stuff, the whole church needs to evaluate itself and maybe change the rules.
One of the big problems that I’ve heard of is that since the church condems homosexuality so much, devout people who find out they are gay join the clergey so they don’t have to admit it and tension builds. How factual it is, I have no clue.
I don’t know what your definition of isolated is, but <a href=“ISOLATED Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com”>here</a> is dictionary.com’s. You just contradicted yourself.
The point is, these cases are few and scattered, but will still be applied to every priest as if it were christian dogma to be a homosexual child-fucker.
In spite of how much you hear about it on the news/internet, what you don’t hear about are the tens of thousands of sane, righteous priests who aren’t, in fact, pedophiles. They’re the ones having their reputation soiled by these elusive “bad apples.”
It’s applied to every priest because of the sheer number of such cases over the years. It’s one of the time bombs that were waiting to be blown up in the church’s face.
Meanwhile…
I can only hope (for your sake) that you don’t take that link seriously…
Delita, bother reading my post before making idiotic claims that I don’t believe in the core principles of Christianity :P. I’m a better Christian than most Christians for the simple reason that although I’m not a religious person, I believe in equality and all that shit :P. I don’t find justification and meaning in a religion for reasons I already stated. Should I be tolerant of the hypocrisy I see even when Jesus himself lost his cool at the Temple? Jesus advocated against what the religions named after him has become because of its followers.
And yeah, political assholes have in the past used “science” to, for example, push forward that white men were superior to other “races” and they had really no basis for saying that. In fact, they used mostly fabricated data. I’m well aware of these examples. And there are other times that people thought something scientific was true, but it wasn’t and it has since been rejected by the scientific community. But here’s the point about science, buddy: science has an automatic caveat that nothing can be proven, only disproven and that what we know is what we know to the extent we can observe them and how we can observe, measure and explain a given phenomenon. Now please stop making yourself sound smart and important by giving off the idea that science is a voodoo practice where people kinda think they know what’s going on.
In our society, religion and science occupy very different roles. Science is what keeps people alive when they’re sick, for example. Not religion. Religions in this world have been passing phenomena, because all a religion needs is to have people believe in it. Science is here to stay because of how the basis of science works and is applied. Science in itself can be summarized to observation, hypthesis, test, results, conclusion. You can be an ass and point out how that’s been used the wrong way, but if you look at how this has been used as you say it has, it really hasn’t been used this way and thus isn’t science. Science isn’t an organization. The concept of science and religion aren’t comparable for the purpose you described.
And Hades: these aren’t just isolated cases, it IS everywhere. Its most common in the US because that’s the only place where it has been publicized so much. When you look at what’s happened, you also need to take into account that the upper levels of the Church knew what was going on and was moving the problem priests around.
Some news clips concerning the subject:
More than 150 lawsuits against Catholic dioceses in Northern California have been bundled into a litigious mega-case filed on the behalf of men and women who say they were sexually abused by priests when they were growing up decades ago in Catholic churches from Santa Rosa to Monterey. “Clergy One” and “Clergy Two” represent hundreds of additional abuse claims that have been filed and combined in Los Angeles and San Diego. USA - San Francisco Chronicle, CA - July 15, 2004
THE Catholic Church is investigating scores of new cases of alleged sexual abuse in England and Wales, according to a report to be published today. The first report of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (COPCA) spells out at least 150 cases, ranging from allegations of inappropriate behaviour to cases considered serious enough to be reported to the authorities. COPCA does not investigate allegations in Scotland and no equivalent body exists north of the Border. United Kingdom - The Scotsman - October 27, 2003 Church unit combating child abuse
BOSTON - Clergy members and others in the Boston Archdiocese likely sexually abused more than 1,000 people over a period of six decades, Massachusetts’ attorney general said Wednesday, calling the scandal so massive it “borders on the unbelievable.” (CBS News)
WASHINGTON - About 4 percent of U.S. priests ministering from 1950 to 2002 were accused of sex abuse with a minor, according to the first comprehensive national study of the issue. (CNS)
There is much more of this “stuff” :
http://www.primetimecrime.com/Recent/sex%20crimes%20catholic.htm
…
Sin: But it’s not organized, and this has nothing to do with my point anyway. The point is that the (vast) majority of priests are being disgraced by the (comparatively) very few bad ones.
Corrupt adminstration isn’t anything new either.
Its not a plot on part of the priests, thus it isn’t a cooperation in that form. However, it is a cooperation to the point where the leadership looks the other way and pushes the problem aside. My entire diatribe is about the misadministration/misuse of religion. As you said so eloquently, its nothing new 