Just saw this movie last night. Anyone else see it? Really shocking movie. Left me feeling pretty sad for humanity in general. 6% of priests were pedophiles. 87 priests in Boston alone. With thousands and thousands of victims in Boston alone. The church knew about all of it and used religious pressure to guilt people into not filing any legal action against the priests. And like good catholics the parents did what the Cardinal asked them to do. The church promised that each instance was a first and they would be taken out of the church. But they lied. They knew the priests were repeat offenders and they just kept transfering them from church to church where they had more and more new victims. They couldnt have facilitated pedophilia any better if they tried. The church was literally a child abuse factory producing abuse and protecting abusers worldwide an a massive scale. The thing that really saddens me is that this story means that there is literally nothing that will stop people from being religious or going to church. If the church can help pedophiles to rape hundreds of thousands of children all around the world. And parents still choose to send their kids there.... then that means nothing at all will stop them. If I opened a club. And our members went around raping thousands of kids and the club helped them to rape kids and not get caught. I would hope that our club would get shut down. But apparently even these basic rules of logic dont follow when religion is involved.
My mother-in-law at a birthday brunch in January and we touched on this topic. She firstly asked "do you really think Rolf Harris did any of that?" and she even more firmly believes that a priest would do "no such thing". We (gently) jumped on her naivety and suggested that is part of the problem... believers believing these things didn't happen, and are not still happening now. She still doesn't believe any of it really happened. Pathetic.
Shame really. My mother is Catholic and she found it shocking, no excuses on her part thankfully. If there were I would be setting her straight Anyone interested, I started a thread on SS on Rolf Harris, look at how many people were in denial, I call them "paedophile apologists". Anyone been following this story - Somersoft Property Investment Forums
I agree it is a shame, but I'm sure she isn't the only one happy to believe things like this "could never happen" or even if they must acknowledge something, believe it is a small issue and involves only a few perpetrators. My MIL lives in her own little make believe world on most issues, including family issues. Things are glossed over and everything sounds better than reality. Her decision to tell different stories, glossing over issues, dropped hubby and me into some hot water recently with her lying to different siblings and questions asked about what some heard from us, which was completely different to her stories to them. I spoke up because I'm not going to put up with it. She's had to pretend she got confused, but she is sharp as a tack and plays these games all the time. She thinks she gets away with it. Gives me the pips.
I denounced my Catholicism outwardly as a result of their collective child abuse. The church as a whole is as equally guilty as the perpetrators. If a collective cannot uphold the safety of children as paramount, then it has no place. I would not be saddened to see the Institution collapse entirely. The lies continue even today. I did not have the looks the brothers were after when I was young. One brother painted 12 of their portraits. All 12 of them killed themselves. I couldn't and wouldn't be able to watch it Tim. When I was a first year Doctor, I gave CPR unsuccessfully to a 2 year old who had been sexually assaulted to death. I remember her lifeless body, every second of the 45 minutes we spent with it, and every bloody detail depicting what he had done to her. I've never been more disgusted and had such little faith in humanity than that moment. **** them.
Paedophilia is not just in the Catholic Church and what happened in Boston has opened peoples eyes to how perverted some members of our community are. Think about in Australia alone there has been proven allegations in the - Catholic Church - Anglican Church - Church of England - Islam - Salvation Army - Hillsong - Various Sporting groups - Various acting and dancing associations and there will be more to come.
It's wretched. The catholic church harbours the world's largest army of child rapists, is the second largest landholder on planet earth, pays no land tax and accepts who knows how much in tithes and donations from its loyal members.
Please don't lump all Christians into the same hole as the perpetrators of these crimes. I am just as appalled as the rest of you, but I am also able to see with my eyes all the good people within these organisations. The organisations (institutional religions) themselves and the bad guys suck, but there are many many millions of decent Catholics around the world. Just as there are many many good musicians (compare Rolf Harris), Scout leaders, Anglicans, Salvationists, people who attend Hillsong etc.etc.
Never going to happen. It's a human quality. (1) IQ is a measure of pattern recognition abilities. (2) Humans have awesome pattern recognition abilities. (3) It is more advantageous to "over" recognise patterns than "under" recognise patterns. For example it's better to avoid all berries in the forest upon seeing your sibling die after eating red berries, rather than continue eating purple berries which may turn out to also be poisonous. If you're wrong to avoid them, you don't die. If you're wrong to continue eating them, you die. (4) Humans have therefore evolved a propensity for superstition because they err on the side of over recognising patterns. I.e "I walked under a ladder and then I lost my wallet. So walking under a ladder is bad luck." - B. F. Skinner also saw this propensity in pigeons. Giving pigeons food at random intervals resulted in superstitious behaviour. Some pigeons pecked at the ground constantly. Some jumped from perch to perch over and over again. Some spun in circles. Etc... The conditioning happened simply by the pigeon randomly getting food when it was doing a random behaviour. So the pigeon tried the behaviour again to see if there was a pattern, and what do you know a little bit later they got food again. So then they just constantly did the behaviour. That's how superstitions develop. (5) Religion is another superstitious behaviour: "I prayed and then I got better and didn't feel sick any more", etc.... so then they pray more and of course the more you do a behaviour the more likely it is that a reward will occur while you're doing that behaviour, hence the behaviour increases and the superstition increases. (6) Science breaks this superstitious behaviour by putting in place a structure where independent variables are measured against dependent variables while ruling out extraneous variables. So basically observing or manipulating relationships between individual things while putting in place conditions to rule out possible interfering things, and also taking into consideration random chance. (7) Science takes education, and the world is very uneducated. (8) Education takes money and prosperity/peace, etc..., and the world lacks in that as well. (9) Religion will continue due to all of these factors. Not only does giving up religion mean being lucky enough to find yourself in the right supportive circumstances to be informed enough to give it up, it also takes a conscious effort to go against human kind's superstitious pattern recognition nature. At least that's what I think.
If 6% of teachers at public schools were child rapists. And the school was hiding which ones were rapists. And the school was protecting the rapists and shifting them from school to school so they could keep raping kids. Would you still send your kids to public school?
The cardinal in the movie who protected all the paedophiles and convinced all the families to stay quiet about the abuse and transferred the paedophiles from parish to parish, all documented, guess what punishment the church gave him? A massive promotion. Bernard Francis Law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Plenty of reported cases where teachers have slept with their younger students and they are now classified as pedophiles. People still sending their kids to school. I don't want to make light of this scourge though.
To add to that list... - Public Schools - Private Schools - Every other school - Child cares, before and after school care, vacation care, girl guides, scouts, etc - Babysitters - Every race, every religion, every belief system, every community...... - Family members, siblings, parents, step-parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins....... It's a people problem.
Isn't that what happened to the Australian guy in the news at the moment, ended up next in line to the Pope?
This is true, but it's hard to compare the scale, and likely orchestration and subsequent selective vision demonstrated by the clergy. And these are the 'people of god', those who should know and act better. They are the worst kind of hypocrite. There was a paediatrician in England who just got convicted (or at least charged) for touching up his paediatric cancer patients, often in the same room as the parents. Weasel. I try very hard to never allow an opportunity for this to happen with my children, although we can't always protect them. I don't let males look after my kids - even from our extended family. I don't necessarily tell them why, but my wife knows. It's sad to think like that, but my previous story illustrates why I do.
I believe that Catholicism needs to look at celibacy for the priesthood. A forced abstinence from one of the most fundamental human desires cannot help but encourage clandestine activity, and possibly even a belief that sexual activity with minors isn't at the same level as full intercourse with an adult. Combined with that- religion (not just Catholicism) may tend to attract people who have desires that they feel guilty about, and who are looking for some sort of forgiveness or self punishment. Many would only have opportunities to mix with others of their own sex, young or old.
