Apparently the Irish can’t follow SOP when dealing with boyfucking priests:
The Murphy Commission’s requests offended many in the Vatican, the Holy See’s Assessor Peter Wells (protect strictly) told DCM, because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty. Vatican officials were also angered that the Government of Ireland did not step in to direct the Murphy Commission to follow standard procedures in communications with Vatican City. Adding insult to injury, Vatican officials also believed some Irish opposition politicians were making political hay with the situation by calling publicly on the government to demand that the Vatican reply.
That really does add insult to injury – how much pain must the Vatican endure in these investigations of their boyfucking? When will their long nightmare of boyfucking exposure end? And where did these Irish get the cheek to try to apply the rule of law to the Holy See?
It’s clear that those opposition politicians are real Irish, according to Dick Nixon:
In a conversation Feb. 13, 1973, with Charles W. Colson, a senior adviser who had just told Nixon that he had always had “a little prejudice,” Nixon said he was not prejudiced but continued: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.”
“The Jews have certain traits,” he said. “The Irish have certain — for example, the Irish can’t drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.”
(via El Cid in the comments)
Dennis G.
One just has to love the wit and wisdom of Nixon. Even after all these years he always is astounding.
arguingwithsignposts
“the real Irish” is like the “true scotsman”?
Ella in New Mexico
So, let me get this straight. Now priests in every country are some kind foreign dignitaries, exempt from prosecution for crimes committed–even if they are citizens of THAT country? WTF?
If that’s the case, so be it. Make it so the bastards have to apply for VISA’s, and if they don’t have one, deport them back to live in Vatican City.
arguingwithsignposts
@Ella in New Mexico:
We agree on something. :)
Joey Maloney
I find the use of the term “boyfucking” extremely unfair, prejudicial, and inflammatory. Even worse, it’s inaccurate.
Those priests fucked plenty of little girls, too.
PurpleGirl
@Ella in New Mexico: I like how you’re thinking here.
jayjaybear
It’s somewhat ironic and unfunnily amusing to see an organization that was trying to foist these priests off as “independent contractors” and therefore not the Vatican’s (or the individual diocese’s) responsibility back when all of this started coming out now claiming that these priests have some kind of special diplomatic immunity or something.
arguingwithsignposts
@Joey Maloney:
pedobear is apparently a Catholic priest, too.
El Cid
None of this would have happened if Wikileaks didn’t harm diplomatic abilities to do the right things in secret.
aimai
@jayjaybear:
Yes, precisely. The same thing is playing out in the Netherlands right now with accusations back and forth that the Vatican is not legally responsible for the actions of subordinate, subcontractor, groups like the Don Bosco order. The Vatican wants to have it both ways: they are not responsible for the “orders” and they do control them financially and in terms of dogma. In the Irish case the whole thing is particularly egregious because the Church was performing the function, at public expense, of running public education.
I don’t get the excitement over the Cables–in general they read like a precis of publicly available news in a given country. Almost nothing in those cables wasn’t a simple rehash of public Irish accounts, polls, and surveys. Once or twice some mention was made of “Vatican contacts” and their opinions but their opinions were so patently obvious that you scarcely needed to have access to those contacts to have predicted them in full. Poutrage at eleven when Vatican forced to deal with reality.
aimai
Dennis SGMM
Seems like the expression “Holy Fuck!” has a different meaning for the Vatican than it does for the rest of us.
Violet
@Dennis SGMM:
Ohhhh….that made me cringe.
@Ella in New Mexico:
Excellent idea. Let the pedophiles apply for visas and see how well that works out.
maya
@jayjaybear: Yes. And given special pedomatic licence plates so that they will not be ticketed when double-parked at the playground.
El Cid
@Dennis SGMM: Thx, enjoy the veal, etc.
rf80412
Henry VIII started the Church of England for far less than this … and its high church variations are more Catholic than Protestant in both form and spirit.
Breaking from the Vatican and establishing an “Irish Catholic Church” – preserving all the ritual and dogma and run by bishops and their descendants who would still enjoy apostolic succession from St. Peter (except if you believe it can only be transmitted by the Pope or with his blessing) – seems the logical course for anyone committed to the Catholic faith but no longer willing to tolerate its sheltering of pedophiles.
Roy G
Why does Nixon suddenly seem so quaint?
I have a feeling that if he were to come back today and see the Republicans, he’d say, ‘Damn, those are some sick and twisted motherfuckers.’
burnspbesq
Well, fancy that. Diplomats are outraged because an Irish … what amounted to a special prosecutor … bypassed diplomatic channels and communicated directly with the Vatican bureaucracy.
Remind me again why that’s of interest to me. Other than as a pretext for another round of anti-Catholic bigotry.
Jesus, some days it’s like 1855 around here.
PurpleGirl
It’s ironic (?) that this is the same issue over which Thomas Becket and King Henry II fought those many years ago. No, not pedophilia, but who was the authority to whom a priest or member of holy orders should be subject to for breaking civil law. Henry wanted the clergy subject to the king, Becket claimed all clergy was subject to ecclesiastical authority, even for civil crimes. Almost a thousand years later, several church reformations and this is still a hot issue.
joe from Lowell
@Ella in New Mexico:
@jayjaybear:
No, they’re talking about actual foreign dignitaries – the Papal Nuncio, which is the ambassador from Vatican City – not Irish priests. You have to scroll down a bit in the linked cable to find out what the quoted passage refers to.
trixie larue
Now, I’m really ticked off. Someone give some jamieson, now.
arguingwithsignposts
@burnspbesq:
With more shouting and less gunfire. And more plumbing. have a kitteh.
scav
@burnspbesq: query. So now those offended and investigating the kidfucking, not to mention the kidfuckees, aren’t Catholic?
joe from Lowell
@aimai:
It’s a bit of a thorny question, because “the Vatican” is both a sovereign state, and also the head of an international organization.
Lesson: church and state don’t mix. Vatican City – the successor state to the Papal States – should dissolve itself, and become a private organization that owns a bunch of buildings in Italy.
Roger Moore
@Ella in New Mexico:
No. RTFA. The problem was that the investigator sent requests directly to Vatican officials at CDF in Rome rather than going through normal diplomatic channels, and he also asked for answers from the Papal Nuncio (i.e. their equivalent of an ambassador). These were not parish priests, or even officials within the Archdiocese of Dublin. They were Vatican officials, and requests to them properly ought to have been sent through diplomatic channels.
The Vatican was within its diplomatic rights not to answer, but that doesn’t mean it was a smart move. It looks as though they’re hiding behind diplomatic procedures to avoid answering tough questions, probably because they are. The sooner the Vatican is treated as an international criminal conspiracy rather than a sovereign state the better.
TooManyJens
@Joey Maloney: I was going to say, let’s not forget about the abused girls!
Damien
@burnspbesq:
Anti-Catholic? No: Anti kid fucking vatican protection racket. There’s a difference.
I’m culturally Catholic. I live in a large Catholic community. I can even safely say that I trust my best friend, who happens to be our local priest, above everyone else aside from my wife. He’s a great man, and we’re BOTH disgusted by the Vatican.
We persecute pedophiles, and we have the RICO act for a reason. The fact that it hasn’t been applied to this organization just because they’re a church is an affront to decency and an admission of corruption.
If you can’t see the difference between true bigotry and an attempt at justice that’s your problem, not an example of anti-catholic persecution.
mistermix
@burnspbesq: If it is 1855 here, we’re still 2400 years ahead of the Catholic Church, which seems to have a view of boyfucking akin to that of the ancient Greeks.
Suffern ACE
Well, if I read the memorandum, the Murphy Commission’s stance that it needn’t follow diplomatic protocols because it wasn’t part of the government of Ireland might be reasonably questioned.
Chyron HR
@burnspbesq:
Gee, I never looked at it that way. Thanks for setting me straight.
joe from Lowell
@mistermix:
Awesome. Now do Jews!
Asshole.
joe from Lowell
@Chyron HR:
Lie.
Stefan
Remind me again why that’s of interest to me. Other than as a pretext for another round of anti-Catholic bigotry.
Yeah, because if it’s one thing the Irish are known for, it’s their anti-Catholic bigotry.*
*Ulstermen excepted.
joe from Lowell
It is precisely this need to exaggerate the facts – “openly promote child molestation” – and to do so in a manner that drags in as many Catholics as possible – “the Catholic Church, which seems to have a view of boyfucking akin to that of the ancient Greeks” – that crosses from criticism of wrongdoing into bigotry.
Just so you know, on the off chance you actually care about bigotry as something you wish to avoid.
Or, you can keep going the Teabagger route – saying deliberately inflammatory, bigoted things about a broad group, and then bemoaning the fact that you can’t criticize anyone without being labeled a bigot.
Stefan
openly promote child molestation
I agree, this is a filthy lie. They conspired, lied and went to great lengths for years and years to cover up their child molestation so it could continue undetected. You can hardly say that’s openly promoting it, now can you? Let’s give them credit for being the lying cheating scumbags they were.
jayjaybear
I was raised Catholic. I went to Catholic school. My entire family on my mother’s side is Catholic. I am not anti-Catholic. I am anti-child-molester. I am anti-authority-abuser. I am anti-coverup.
Claiming that any and all criticism over the pedophile priest scandals is anti-Catholic is roughly equivalent to the notion that criticism of Israel is anti-semitism. It’s a reflexive smokescreen that’s thrown up so that those who remain blindly loyal to a flawed organization can remain blind and not have to think about difficult moral issues at the core of their loyalty.
joe from Lowell
Stefan,
Would you care to provide antecedents for you pronouns?
I don’t think you would.
“They” who? Do you even care to make the effort to avoid tarring the innocent majority?
This thread sounds an awful lot like a Free Republic thread about the Burlington Coat Factory mosque. “They” “They” “They”
And making “they” as broad as possible is the point.
joe from Lowell
@jayjaybear:
has absolutely nothing to do with anything anyone has written on this thread.
I see you’re going the Teabagger route. “Sheesh, you can’t even condemn a ghetto community organizer urban thug without people calling you a racist.”
shortstop
@Damien:
Not to Burnsie. He’s just that incisive an intellect.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that expressing deep anger at unpunished pedophilia, including institutionalized abuse and the corporate protection of abusers, is synonymous with “anti-Catholic bias.” Just once I’d like to see Burns get 1/100th as outraged about prejudice directed at some demographic group to which he doesn’t belong as he gets exercised at perceived slights to white, male, older, Christian high earners (have I missed any characteristic about which he’s worn the mantle of whining victimhood? Wait, someone here once said something mean about Orange County, too, I think).
The predictability of his total self-absorption is starting to get old. Mix it up and throw us for a loop, Burns, by briefly pretending to give a shit about someone who isn’t you.
joe from Lowell
You want to know what’s a reflexive smokescreen?
Responding to
with
Stefan
Would you care to provide antecedents for you pronouns? I don’t think you would.
Sure I would. “They” is the Roman Catholic church hierarchy, the entire network of parish priests, monsignors, bishops, cardinals and the current Pope who spent decades conspiring to cover-up a vast conspiracy of child rape and abuse.
“They” who? Do you even care to make the effort to avoid tarring the innocent majority?
I’m Irish Catholic. I’m in the innocent majority, so no, I don’t feel the need to make the effort since I know exactly who I’m talking about.
shortstop
@joe from Lowell:
Whereas Burns announcing that this subject is of no interest and is just an excuse for coming expressions of anti-Catholic bias was…what, Joe?
eemom
holy (tee hee) shit. Yet again a quiet little post making a relatively non-controversial point bursts into flames.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
A stance which now includes:
But don’t worry, it’s not anti-Catholic.
I wonder, how many of you would be explaining to a black person why the joke that offended them wasn’t racist.
shortstop
@Stefan: Aw, you can’t be that Catholic or you’d be personally offended by someone criticizing the church’s handling of/response to the childfucking.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@jayjaybear:
Same here and this lapsed Catholic says jail the fuckers and those who engaged in the cover up. If the Vatican gets pissy then break off diplomatic relations with them until they straighten up. They need access to us more than we need it with them. Criminals are criminals and child rapists are particularly despicable criminals. Especially those who do so from a position of authority and trust.
The ones who are the really sick fuckers are those who cover for the crimes of others only to protect something they value more than the children who were violated. That they are the leaders of the church is really disgusting.
arguingwithsignposts
@joe from Lowell:
get back to me when black people systematically hide the abuse perpetuated on children for years and years. False equivalency much, joe?
joe from Lowell
@Stefan:
“The entire network of parish priests, monsignors, bishops” and cardinals didn’t spend decades conspiring to cover up rape and abuse. That is a lie, a bigoted lie, indistinguishable from the lies told by anti-Muslim bigots that seek to tar that entire religion and its religious leadership as terrorists.
It is also a lie to claim that there was a “conspiracy of child rape and abuse.” There was no such conspiracy, no concerted effort to make child abuse happen. There was a conspiracy among some specific individuals to cover up child abuse and other crimes and misbehavior of a sexual nature, but you again cross the line into prejudiced fantasy to claim that there was “a conspiracy of child rape and abuse.”
Stefan
Aw, you can’t be that Catholic or you’d be personally offended by someone criticizing the church’s handling of/response to the childfucking.
Fair point.
In seriousness, though, I’ve found that it’s Catholics who are themselves the most enraged and betrayed by the Church’s abuses, because, after all, we were the ones the Church was preying on: the victims were ourselves, our children, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, mothers and fathers. The victims were the innocent little children Catholic families entrusted to the care of supposedly decent priests who then took that trust and used it to shatter young lives.
Kenneth
Is joe from Lowell really Bill Donahue?
We have every right to call your believe in a sky-daddy and the belief that little old pedophile virgins in robes can tell you what to do fucking stupid, joe.
You choose religion, you don’t choose your race.
scav
@joe from Lowell:
This crew? On a bad day, more than you’d expect, on a good day: 600 post thread, easy.
Stefan
I wonder, how many of you would be explaining to a black person why the joke that offended them wasn’t racist.
Analogy fail. Most of us in this discussion seem to be Catholics, so the proper analogy would be one black person making a joke about black people to another black person. Which, you know, I think happens quite often, that people in the same ethnic/religious/racial groups joke among each other about their common foibles.*
*See Allen, Woody.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
The subject of this post is a diplomatic spat involving criminal investigators going through the wrong channels and bypassing diplomatic protocols – a subject which the writer and commenters seize upon to start making prejudiced attacks on the Catholic clergy as a whole.
I’d say that Burns has it exactly right. Why should he care about this diplomatic spat? And why does the subject of this diplomatic spat open the floodgates for, say, Chyron HR to think it’s clever to rewrite “anti-Catholic bigotry” with “anti-pederast bigotry?”
Kenneth
Muslims and Jews are also small powerless minorities in this country, Catholics are most certainly NOT.
Check your privilege before comparing yourself to Muslims and Jews, joe.
Stefan
That is a lie, a bigoted lie
Maybe I’m not getting it, but explain to me how I, an Irish Catholic from a large Catholic family, am an anti-Catholic bigot with an irrational hatred of Catholics?
shortstop
@joe from Lowell:
Absolutely true. I know a number of parish priests who are appalled by their superiors’ behavior. They’re the low men on the totem poles, of course. And there are other men at all levels who only recently joined the cover-up–no decades involved there!
You’ll have a hard time making that case in light of the Irish report and, even more, the revelations of what the Christian Brothers were up to in Australia. Both of these situations are perfectly fairly characterized as a conspiracy before the fact as well as after it.
Joe, out of curiosity, how much time do you spend as a member of the innocent majority getting after the guilty hierarchy? Do you make as much noise at your church plutocracy for its sins and crimes and demonstrable resistance to meaningful punishment of perps as you do at laypeople, including other Catholics, by whose comments you inexplicably feel personally wounded?
joe from Lowell
@arguingwithsignposts:
How about I get back to when the vast majority of Catholic clergy didn’t systematically hide the abuse perpetrated for years and years? You know, like right now?
That’s the point, pinhead: you don’t get to slander an entire group of people by pointing to the bad acts of a few. You get this when the slandered group is black, and you willfully ignore it when that group is not. That is the very real equivalency that you are trying so hard to justify ignoring.
shortstop
@arguingwithsignposts: And actually, the real analogy would be white people taking offense at black people complaining of institutionalized racism in the U.S. Joe’s comments are the Catholic version of “But my family never owned slaves!”
Kenneth
@shortstop:
+1!
Stefan
The entire network of parish priests, monsignors, bishops” and cardinals didn’t spend decades conspiring to cover up rape and abuse. That is a lie, a bigoted lie, indistinguishable from the lies told by anti-Muslim bigots that seek to tar that entire religion and its religious leadership as terrorists.
Reading comprehension fail. Let’s examine my original sentence before you truncated it.
“They” is the Roman Catholic church hierarchy, the entire network of parish priests, monsignors, bishops, cardinals and the current Pope who spent decades conspiring to cover-up a vast conspiracy of child rape and abuse.
The subject of the sentence is the “network….who spent decades…conspiring…” That doesn’t mean that every single priest, monsignor, etc. in the entire Church was in the network, but it does mean that there was “a” network operating within the larger Church that was engaged in this conspiracy. Do you deny that there was ever any coordinated action within the Church hierarchy to cover up and hide child abuse?
joe from Lowell
@Stefan:
Yes, indeed. We are.
And yet, it is more important to some to slander us, and the good priests who stepped in to stop this, than to limit their condemnation to the guilty and make common cause with us.
Because for so many, the abuse crisis is just a jumping off point, no different than how the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ is just a jumping off point for those with an ever-so-slightly-different agenda.
Kenneth
Again, Jews and Muslims are small powerless minorities.
The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church in the country. Big fucking difference.
You sound like Glenn Beck complaining about “anti-white racism”.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
Great. Now all of those people straining so hard to insist that bigotry has nothing whatsoever to do with this conversation can prove it by condemning Kenneth, or they can concede that they’re guilty as charged by remaining silent.
I’m not going to hold my breath.
Suffern ACE
Joe from Lowell suddenly equated with Bill Donohue? WTF is with you people?
arguingwithsignposts
@joe from Lowell: You don’t get to choose your race, Joe.
and just for the record, I am not catholic, never been, but I’ve been a fundie, and I’d call this shit out anyway if they did the same thing. It got hidden for years and years. Just because there’s some light on it now doesn’t excuse the past.
and I thought the pedobear joke was funny, so sue me.
shortstop
@Stefan: And members of the church plutocracy–as well as the ever-increasing number of men at the diocesan level who have been revealed to have participated in putting children at risk with known pedophiles–really, really don’t get this. They literally cannot see the depth of their betrayal and how gigantic their moral crime is. And they don’t want to.
Stefan
That’s the point, pinhead: you don’t get to slander an entire group of people by pointing to the bad acts of a few.
See, this is where I think you’re going wrong: we’re not slandering the entire group of all Catholics. We’re slandering the very specific group of Church hierarchy who was engaged child abuse.
joe from Lowell
@Stefan:
Wow.
You’ve never seen two black people have such a conversation, have you?
Jokes? Really? You’re going to hide all of the totally-not-prejudiced-against-Catholics commentary above behind “Whoa, just a joke!”
Give me a break.
Kenneth
Do we have a deep-seated hatred of
whiteCatholics and Catholic culture, joe?joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
So therefore….what?
Everyone, please mentally finish Kenneth sentence, which is a response to being called out for being bigoted towards Catholics.
He responds to this charge with, They’re not a powerless minority, so therefore…
Nice.
Seriously, Kenneth, people are going to start accusing me of writing your comments as a sock-puppet to prove my point.
arguingwithsignposts
people who hate teh joos are anti-semites. people who hate teh blacks are racists. people who hate teh ghey are homophobes. What are people who hate teh Catholics?
joe from Lowell
@Stefan:
Have you ever heard the term “Uncle Tom?”
You’re repeating smears, in front of people who want to hear them, so you can be “one of the good ones.”
arguingwithsignposts
@joe from Lowell:
Okay, now I’m beginning to think you are Donohue. Seriously, WTF?
Kenneth
Joe sounds just like people who whine about “anti-whte racism” or “reverse racism”.
joe from Lowell
@Stefan:
Ah, yes, obviously, the problem is everyone else. You’re explaining to the black person why they’re wrong to find your joke offensive, because you only meant some of them. Those other ones.
Here’s a hint, that may serve you well here and elsewhere: if you’re slagging on “some” members of a group, and other members of that group find your commentary offensive, and think you’re lumping together everyone, the problem probably isn’t them. I’d like to remind you that your original comment used, exclusively, the pronoun “they,” and that even this explanation is now the third iteration of what you wrote, created by being prompted twice.
Maybe it would be better if you made the effort to be clear the first time.
Kenneth
I guess if I said Pat Robertson is a senile charlatan who rips off the Social Security checks of little old ladies waiting for jeebus to come back for the rapture that would make me an “anti-evangelical bigot” too?
What if I said Joseph Smith was a fraud and plagairaist? Am I an “anti-Mormon bigot”?
shortstop
@joe from Lowell: You keep implying, as Burns has done in so many threads of this kind, that every person criticizing the church in this conversation is responsible for every comment made by every other person criticizing the church. By that standard, should we call you pro-molestation?
Of course not. That’d be ridiculous. But you’re not separating your criticism of actual religious bias from your indignation against people pointing out the institutionalized nature of both the crime and the cover-up. You argue that the majority of the church’s ordained men are innocent of enabling this worldwide tragedy (which at this point is only a supposition on your part, and will remain so as long as the church fights tooth and nail to prevent transparency and meaningful investigation) and insist that we differentiate between the guilty and the innocent in the church. Fair enough, but you might start demonstrating your belief in the concept of individual responsibility by at least trying to differentiate among commenters here.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
And yet, you write about the issue using language that appears to apply to the entirety of the clergy, and win plaudits from those who are openly, explicitly anti-Catholic, like Kenneth. Wouldn’t it be better to use clearer language instead?
J
@joe from Lowell:
The Murphy Commission was instituted as an independent commission precisely because the Irish state was to some extent complicit in the cover up. Hence, the “criminal investigators going through the wrong channels” is BS.
eemom
if it’s truth, it’s not slander.
And I’m sorry, but I have to agree. The Catholic Church — as an institution — is corrupt, evil, glutted with wealth and power, and rotten to the core — and has been for centuries. The sexual abuse of children, horrible as it is, is far from the first heinous crime that institution has perpetrated and/or enabled.
That is just a fact, and it’s no slander of any kind on any individual, innocent Catholic.
shortstop
@joe from Lowell: This may be the most offensive thing you’ve said so far. I’ve certainly received the answer to my question about whether you’re remotely as outraged about thousands of people’s lives being irreparably damaged by predatory priests and their corrupt protectors as you are about your personal fee-fees being hurt. Really, you are fucking shameless.
Kenneth
@eemom:
Exactly.
When people said the Soviet Union was a rotten, militaristic, totalitaran hellhole it wasn’t some judgement on the Russian people but their country as an institution. Not “anti-Russian bigotry”.
Rugosa
We have 200 years of evidence that the Catholic church will put the reputation of its priests, parishes and high mucky-mucks before the safety of its children.
Several American Catholic dioceses have proposed new policies in dealing with accusations of pedophilia against priests. The simple answer is that if an illegal act is suspected, it should be reported to the police. Always. Every time. The bishop doesn’t get a say. He doesn’t get to move the priest to another parish or to a treatment center. The civil authorities make the decisions. I have read summaries of several of these new “forward-thinking” diocesan policies. I could have missed it, but none of them require calling the police until way down the line.
I was a social worker for 30 years with abused children. The law is that accusations of sexual abuse get an immediate review (24 hours) and then, if there is any credibility, referral to the ADA’s office within a few days.
We may need to deal with the Vatican on global issues, but today, if a child claims abuse, call the police, THEN call the parish priest and the bishop.
joe from Lowell
Come on, people, more opportunities to condemn religious bigotry!
Let’s see it!
Here we have two explicit defenses of anti-Catholic prejudice:
It’s ok to be prejudiced toward Catholics because…
@Kenneth: Again, Jews and Muslims are small powerless minorities…The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church in the country. Big fucking difference.
It’s ok to express prejudice towards Catholics because…
@arguingwithsignposts: You don’t get to choose your race, Joe.
Let’s hear it from those people who absolutely deplore religious bigotry.
Hello?
joe from Lowell
@Stefan:
I think you need to back and reread the language used on this thread.
You might not intend to slander the entire group of all Catholics, or the entire group of all Catholic clergy, but the fact that those who do intend to slander such people, who openly support and defend doing so, keep agreeing with you, while members of that group you don’t intend to slander are taking offense.
Don’t you think there’s a conclusion that can be drawn about language?
Chuck Butcher
The word Catholic is not shorthand for pedophilia though some of these comments seem to take it as such – or qualify as outright bigotry. There is an entrenched group within the Church that deserves an asskicking of monumental proprtions but that scarcely justifies painting an entire church with that brush.
Ah well, carry on…
gordon schumway
@joe from Lowell:
A few bad apples, eh?
joe from Lowell
I’m going to run an errand now.
Let’s see, when I get back, how the comments taking exception to the explicit defenses of anti-Catholic bigotry stack up to the comments taking exception to me for disliking that bigotry.
Surprise me.
arguingwithsignposts
@joe from Lowell:
well, *two* members of that group take offense. When did you appoint yourself spokesperson for the entire Catholic Church, Joe?
For the record, I have no qualms with most catholics, know some catholic priests and quite a few catholic believers. The actions of the hierarchy doesn’t flow down to the group. You can’t seem to see that difference, JfL.
Stefan
You’ve never seen two black people have such a conversation, have you?
Uh, yes. Very many times.
Kenneth
@joe from Lowell:
Hey joe, what do you think of Mormons and rapture-ready Evangelicals?
This ought to be good…
Stefan
Have you ever heard the term “Uncle Tom?” You’re repeating smears, in front of people who want to hear them, so you can be “one of the good ones.”
My god, you hysterical drama queen. Get a grip on your emotions, you loon.
eemom
how exactly do you define that group? Doesn’t there come a point where the so-called “entrenched group” — being, as it is, the one that wields all the power, that forms both brains and brawn of the entity known as “the Church” — becomes indistinguishable from the institution itself?
But Catholicism, the religion, is not the same thing as the Catholic Church, the institution.
That is what the folks here complaining of bigotry are refusing to accept.
asiangrrlMN
@joe from Lowell: You can dislike the bigotry as you see it all you want. What I don’t see is you being outraged by the priests who fucked and raped and diddled and molested and abused children and by the people who did cover it up. So, to me, you are more interested in defending your religion and the people who did the fucking up (literally) than you are about the victims in the cases. For a change, you prove that’s not the case (since you are demanding everyone else conform to your standard). Then, we’ll talk. There has been a systematic cover-up of the child abuse over decades. The pope was in on it. He’s your top guy, is he not? It’s not anti-Catholic to be disgusted with an institution that has perpetuated these abuses. The fact that you insist it’s bigotry is doubly-heinous.
@eemom: Or this. We’re railing at the church, not the religion. For fuck’s sake. And, if joe says it’s the same, then that’s a problem in and of itself.
@Stefan: Suddenly, he’s the victim. Catholicism is the victim. In this case, joe is being very conservative.
master c
Im still hoping for an American Catholic Church………….
That’s what I would like.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
No, it was not a conspiracy among some specific individuals. It was church policy to reassign pedophile priests to other parishes rather than report them to the police. I’ll happily admit that only a fraction of the church hierarchy was actively involved in implementing that policy, but it was a policy designed an implemented from the top down. If the Catholic Church has an official policy of concealing criminal activity, it’s fair to describe the Church as corrupt and the officials involved in implementing that policy as engaged in criminal conspiracy. That’s still true though most priests aren’t involved either as perpetrators or accessories to molestation.
shortstop
@joe from Lowell:
The conclusion you’re drawing looks this way in reverse: Many of the people who would enthusiastically endorse your comments in this thread are priests who have personally raped children and others who have explicitly protected those who have done so.
See how that works?
You are so goddamned self-referential that you can’t even grasp the ludicrousness of constantly assigning group blame to individual comments while insisting that people stop blaming the church in general for the actions of morally and legally culpable individuals. Your sense of irony is as dead as your sense of proportion, which allows you to harp endlessly and make erroneous analogies about your sense of victimhood, even as you steadfastly decline to acknowledge the systematic and institutionalized nature of the crime and the cover-up.
Your pleas that the majority not be blamed for the minority (as if it were even possible to determine which is which in the case of the priesthood, thanks to the church’s refusal to police itself) would have a hell of a lot more credence if you could get past the simple step of even acknowledging that the abuse and cover-up have been widespread and organized. Your unwillingness to do even that casts real aspersions on your honesty and good faith.
Suffern ACE
Actually, I think if someone pointed out that Pat Robertson used his TV show to scare widows into giving him their money, that might be a valid criticism. But if someone then decided that evangelical Christianity was about that, i’d have some problems with that. Just like the foundations of Lutheranism isn’t about burning Jews in Nazi Germany.
But hey. Catholicism is just one big conspiracy to openly get parents to give their children to priests and nuns for child rape, or something. And because it involves children (especially boys), the sky is the limit as to the outrage…
I don’t know why someone might get all huffy? Only a fool like Bill Donohue would think that there was some bigotry in letting jokes like that pass without comment in a public forum.
Just a joke. Gosh you’re so touchy.
Ripley
Atavistic mafia-like death cult: Now with more kid fucking!
Go, Irish.
eemom
@Kenneth:
see, I think remarks like that perpetuate the confusion. Because those groups generally are criticized/ridiculed for what they believe, as opposed to the secular crimes of an institution that bears their name.
AhabTRuler
@eemom: The head of that entrenched group is now also the head of the broader organization.
@asiangrrlMN: The Church and the religion are one and the same. This is the conundrum that the modern intellectual Catholic faces. There’s already a word for people who wish to separate their relationship with God from their relationship with the one true Church’s hierarchy: Protestant.
eemom
@Suffern ACE:
…..in other words, This.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
Nobody cares, Kenneth. Even the people nominally on your side don’t care.
No, because you’d be singling out individuals. Nobody has a problem with singling out individuals. It’s your determination not to distinguish between guilty and innocent individualsj, because of your avowed support for slandering the group as a whole, that’s the problem.
arguingwithsignposts
@joe from Lowell: hey, pedobear is an individual!
AhabTRuler
@master c: Here ya go.
@Suffern ACE: Naw, Lutherans were burning Jews in Germany long before the Nazi party was around.
John
Wow, this thread has gotten nasty.
Is that true, though? I would say that the distinguishing feature of Catholicism is its adherence to the teachings of the Catholic Church, centered on Rome. This has been the basic definition of Catholicism since late antiquity, and was strengthened by the changes of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation.
Catholicism and the Catholic Church are so closely entangled that it is incredibly difficult to cleanly separate them.
The same is not the case with decentralized protestant belief systems – being protestant, or even, to an extent, a certain variety of protestant, is about believing certain doctrines. The Church itself becomes far less important in protestantism. Being Catholic means being a member of the Catholic Church.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
I’ve done no such thing. I’ve singled out specific commenters for criticism, quoting them and calling them out by name, and specifically asking other commenters what they think of them.
I’ve also explicitly agreed with at least one commenter’s criticism of the church
Your charge is bogus, and I don’t need to answer to it.
Chuck Butcher
@eemom: how exactly do you define that group?
joe from Lowell
@J:
That does not follow. That the Murphy Commission – an office established by the Irish state – was going directly to the Vatican and Papal Nuncio remains a breach of diplomatic protocol, regardless of the commission’s provenance.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
I can’t for the life of me imagine why you think I’d care about your fee-fees at this point.
Fucking spare me. You “had your answer” before you woke up this morning.
eemom
@Chuck Butcher:
in the abstract, that’s a good question and I was actually thinking about it as I wrote the comment.
In the abstract, I certainly think a government CAN reach a point where it as an institution becomes indistinguishable from the egregious assholes that are running it.
I don’t think the U.S. government is there yet.
And on a practical rather than an abstract level it’s a ridiculous comparison to make to the Catholic church, which pretty much does function — with appalling efficiency — as a single monolithic entity.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
I could find this quote word-for-word an any Islam-bashing thread during the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy.
Remember how that was totally not about anti-Muslim prejudice?
But it’s ok to do this with some groups, but not others. “Kenneth” has a handy chart, with various ethnic, religious, cultural, and national groups divided in Red, Yellow, and Green columns.
Karmakin
The problem is the privilege.
The problem is the privilege.
The problem is the privilege.
I repeated that because it bears repeating. It’s IMPORTANT.
The reason you had the coverups is because people high up in the Catholid church hierarchy put the prestige and image of the Catholic church over basic issues of right and wrong. The reason why they refuse to acknowledge the damage they do to so many people worldwide, is again, because they put prestige and image over basic right and wrong.
Now the problem I have with moderate and even some progressive Catholics, is that they argue in favor, instead of against this privilege. You can see that in this thread. And while I really doubt it’s intended, the wall that they’re building is the wall that childfuckers and gay bashers hide behind.
And it’s not just Catholics. To make that clear.
It’s also the wall that knowledge-deniers and warmongers and world destroyers hide behind as well. And it’s also the same wall that terrorists hide behind as well, both of the Christian AND the Muslim variety.
It’s this wall..that religion is an unquestionable, entirely, completely positive force in the world, that’s the problem. I have no problem with religion, as I think that community is an important thing in this world, however the privilege that religious groups claim (I suspect that this privilege is more seen in Monotheistic belief structures, which is why I think that the only progressive future for religion is in non-theistic or deistic religion) simply isn’t worth the good. Not even close.
I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but damn that bathwater gotta be changed, and to be honest, fast. (Some would argue that it’s already too late)
Kenneth
@joe from Lowell:
Muslims are a powerless minority for the 50 millionth fucking time, Catholics are not.
That’s why we don’t equate a black guy who says “cracker” with a white guy who yells the n-word. Seriously you are to Catholicism what Glenn Beck is to white people.
Poor Catholic Church! They’re only the most powerful religious organization IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and have been for 2,000 years! Poor poor them!
joe from Lowell
@gordon schumway:
I’m sorry, I think you meant to post this on a thread about whether all Muslims are terrorists.
Kenneth
And nobody ever said Catholics should be banned from building a church next to an Elementary School. So I really don’t see the equivalence here.
You can build your churches wherever you want. Who is disputing that? But that doesn’t change the fact your religion is utterly ridiculous, irrational, stupid, and complicity in many crimes against humanity from its founding in the name of the “prince of peace”.
It wasn’t until 1967 that your religion finally said that no, the Jews DON’T have the curse of deicide on them.
joe from Lowell
@arguingwithsignposts:
Actually, three now. On a thread on a liberal blog, where practicing Catholics are few and far between, you have three separate Catholics who find this language offensive, and it appears exactly one who does not.
Oh, please, now you’re just playing dumb.
Yes, some of your best friends are Catholic.
WTF? Are you being willfully dishonest, or you actually this stupid? Every single comments I’ve written has made that point – that it is wrong to attribute the actions of the hierarchy to the group. I’ve spent this thread denouncing people’s efforts to smear the group based on the actions of a few in the hierarchy…and you claim I don’t understand this point?
Whatever, man. You’re deeply confused.
shortstop
Short “errand.”
@joe from Lowell: Sweet thing, the only one worried about his fee-fees here is you. Well, you and Burns, but he’s always worried about his feelings. “Offensive” was the wrong word–you hysterically lashed out at Stefan’s motives because it was the only thing you could think of to say in response to the revelation that other Catholics strongly criticize their church on this issue. That’s not really offensive so much as it’s indicative of your emotional instability and complete lack of honesty.
@Suffern ACE:
Meh, another bad analogy. If evangelical Christianity had a central authority and a top-down hierarchy, if it declared itself outside of civil authority, if we knew that thousands of evangelical clergy across the world were bilking widows and that–following official policy– substantial portions of the hierarchy (from the top down to many local-level officials) were systematically covering it up or looking the other way and reassigning the bent clergy to widow-rich districts…that’s an analogy.
Kenneth
Catholics: AIDS is bad, but condoms are worse!
Sorry, it’s hard not to strongly condemn a religion that believes that kind of rot.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
I think many of them are fine people, and I don’t use my disagreement with them on matters of faith, nor the actions of individual bad actors in their denominations, to justify religious bigotry.
That’s the difference between you and me.
eemom
@AhabTRuler:
@John:
This is a very interesting point you both raise about Catholicism being indistinguishable from the Church itself, and I suspect you’re probably right.
Not a scholar of Catholicism myself — I was brought up in the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Church, which basically pegged Catholicism as bad news and split on its ass over a thousand years ago.
Still, the point remains that a judgment on the Church as an institution is NOT a judgment on innocent, sincere, good faith practitioners of its version of Christianity.
Kenneth
@joe from Lowell:
I’m sure many members of the CPSU and the Baath Party were fine, good, loving people too, joe.
That doesn’t change the fact they were enablers of evil.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
Go ahead, walk it back. We can still read your other comments, champ. Like this one:
Nope, no bigotry there. No attacks on Catholic people.
Any of the totally-not-anti-Catholic commenters care to denounce this asshole yet?
arguingwithsignposts
@joe from Lowell:
And I don’t think anyone in this thread has said the ENTIRE Catholic Church should be burned to the ground for the actions of a few. You are the one who can’t seem to grok that.
Your comments about “Uncle Tom” for instance, I don’t find particularly helpful. Whatever.
Kenneth
@joe from Lowell:
I don’t have the right to say your beliefs are stupid now?
What do you think of the beliefs of Mormons and rapture-ready Evangelicals? Tell us.
arguingwithsignposts
On the other hand, the People’s Front of Judea, I think we can all agree they are worthless. Splitters!
Kenneth
Denounce
Rev. WrightKenneth for what he said aboutwhite peopleCatholics!Chuck Butcher
@eemom:
Scarcely, though the public face may look that way.
As a side note, since I don’t have any religion outside a sort of general half-assed deism I have no interest in defending any religion, including atheism, from the stupidities contained within it.
joe from Lowell
@asiangrrlMN:
You have no idea what I do outside of this blog, and it is incredibly presumptuous of you to claim that I have to prove anything about my outside life to you. “What I don’t see…” Why do you imagine that I have to make you “see” something in order to be qualified to object to prejudice?
“I don’t see.” Whoop-dee-fucking-doo, you don’t see.
John
href=”#comment-2277252″>Kenneth:
Whatever Catholicism’s status in the whole world may be or have been, it was not very long ago that anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States was a real and serious issue. A lot of the attacks on the Catholic Church in light of the pedophilia scandals do tend to take up the tropes of old anti-Catholic prejudice, which was a real thing and which has never fully died.
Catholics in the United States are not comparable to white people. There is a memory of real prejudice suffered in recent times that makes anti-Catholic bigotry a real issue of concern in a way that anti-white bigotry is not.
eemom
@Kenneth:
you have the right to say whatever you want. But it is at this point that you part company with me and, I believe, most of the others that have been arguing with Joe on this thread.
Nothing wrong with an argument about whether the beliefs of a particular religion or all religions are “stupid” or whatever, and there have been many of those on this blog.
But a post criticizing the Catholic Church as an institution over its
grotesque and ongoing evasions of justice in the matter of child abuse is an entirely separate animal.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
Nobody misunderstands your point, dumbass. It’s not confusing, it’s not complicated…it’s just stupid.
Prejudice is wrong. Bigotry is wrong. Smearing people for the group they belong to is wrong. There isn’t some group of people that it’s ok to be bigots towards; bigotry is wrong. Period. Full stop.
The reason Glenn Beck’s whining is foolish is because the “anti-white racism” he complains about doesn’t exist. It’s a figment of his imagination.
…and then want to pretend that bigotry towards Catholics is like Glenn Beck’s boogeyman. Well, you can’t have it both ways.
And, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about how totally NOT anti-Catholic the other commenters on this thread are, it doesn’t appear that a single one of them
Kenneth
Whatever I think I’ve made my point and it is very interesting that someone who also defends American Imperialism also defends the Catholic Church.
Hmmm…someone sure likes authoriatiranism.
Chuck Butcher
The slush is starting to melt off this roof so I have actual productive things to do…
See ya
arguingwithsignposts
@joe from Lowell:
Nowhere in this thread have I attacked your right to believe in God or a god or whatever. Kenneth needs to separate the theological issues from the bureaucratic issues, on this we are agreed.
eemom
@Chuck Butcher:
in that case, what is the basis for that “scarcely”? Are you an expert in the politics and hidden machinations of the Catholic church even though it’s not your religion?
John
@joe from Lowell:
(emphasis mine)
Ah, here’s the rub – the real issue of disagreement is about the degree of the hierarchy’s culpability. Most of those who disagree with Joe seem to think that the hierarchy as a whole stands accused – that the cover-up was something in which the vast majority of the hierarchy was complicit, at least in the western countries where abuse scandals have come to life. That the Church itself had a policy of covering up child abuse scandals in a way that allowed the perpetrators to continue abusing children.
Joe, on the other hand, seems to not only be insisting that most individual priests and (obviously) Catholic believers were innocent of wrong-doing, but that most of the hierarchy itself was innocent. That seems to be the core disagreement here.
joe from Lowell
@Roger Moore:
I think you might have missed the distinction I was making: I objected to the term “conspiracy of child abuse and molestation.” There was no such conspiracy, and the people making that charge are attempting to slander the church by making it sound as if pedophilia itself, not a wrong-headed coverup of misbehavior, was what the church was conspiring to promote.
I certainly have no problem criticizing the church for its policy of trying to hush up these crimes, but it is both inaccurate and and a willful smear to claim that the church conspired to molest children. That was my point.
shortstop
@John:
Which would make sense if the vast majority of people criticizing the church on its handling of mass rape were slamming average Joe (heh) laypeople anywhere but in Joe’s head. As much as Joe wants to–needs to in order to continue fashioning his ersatz victim status–make this all about Kenneth, even a cursory review of the comments here will find that almost everyone is objecting to the church hierarchy’s official participation and culpability.
You simply cannot compare the clout of the plutocracy of one of the world’s largest and most authoritarian religions to that of lay American Catholics of 40 or 50 years ago. The former group is indeed privileged and powerful; the latter was not.
John
@shortstop:
I was responding to Kenneth’s explicit defense of anti-Catholic bigotry, in general, not defending Joe in particular.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@arguingwithsignposts:
Former Catholics? ;)
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
No, they wouldn’t. That doesn’t make any sense at all. They would endorse my comments about their behavior being wrong? They would endorse my comments about their being distinct from the church? No, they wouldn’t. Your logic here doesn’t make any sense.
I’ve done no such thing. Ever. You are making this up, and I have nothing whatsoever to answer for on this score. Therefore, the entire rest of your argument, which relies upon this false charge as a proposition, fails.
@shortstop:
I’ve freely acknowledged, many times now, that the coverup was widespread and organized, but the claim that the abuse was widespread and organized is false. It appears that the bad faith here is yours, as you keep denying what I’ve written, and putting forward this false claim.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
No, they wouldn’t. That doesn’t make any sense at all. They would endorse my comments about their behavior being wrong? They would endorse my comments about their being distinct from the church? No, they wouldn’t. Your logic here doesn’t make any sense.
I’ve done no such thing. Ever. You are making this up, and I have nothing whatsoever to answer for on this score. Therefore, the entire rest of your argument, which relies upon this false charge as a proposition, fails.
@shortstop:
I’ve freely acknowledged, many times now, that the coverup was widespread and organized, but the claim that the abuse was widespread and organized is false. It appears that the bad faith here is yours, as you keep denying what I’ve written, and putting forward this false claim.
joe from Lowell
@Ripley:
So, does anybody have a problem with this?
Since no one is an anti-Catholic big, after all.
Bubblegum Tate
I know you ask this question sarcastically, Doug, but it fucking infuriates me that there are plenty of shitbag Catholics who ask that question seriously, as though the real victim in all this is the Catholic church and not, you know, the victims of abuse. It’s just deplorable to see–and to top it off, those are the same folks who will immediately turn around and lecture you about how their “morality” is superior.
joe from Lowell
@arguingwithsignposts:
Lol. Zing!
My point was, you’re doing a big “John is a man, so all men are John.”
Some (small minority of) Catholic priests are/were child molesters, so therefore, a child molester must be a Catholic priest.
In a different context, I’d find the Pedobear joke funny, but on a thread with people making the same point in deadly earnestness, and others who are making a different point but don’t find that smear worth even the mildest rebuke, it just isn’t funny.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
But there is no institutional Islam in the same way there’s an institutional Catholic Church. Criticizing the Church for the pedophile scandals is like criticizing America for Abu Ghraib. It isn’t completely fair because most Americans weren’t involved, but it did reflect on policies deliberately adopted by the US government. Similarly, most Catholics weren’t involved in the pedophile scandal, but it does reflect on policies deliberately adopted by the Church.
In contrast, criticizing Islam for the 9/11 attacks is like criticizing Christianity for abortion clinic bombings. There’s no single Christian church, the attacks were made by an extremist fringe within one small branch of the family of Christian churches, and they seem to contradict fundamental Christian principles. Similarly, there is no single Muslim church, the 9/11 attack was carried out by an extremist fringe within one branch of Islam, and the attacks seem to contradict important Muslim principles.
joe from Lowell
@eemom:
Really? Is that what it looks like to you?
Man, I can tell you, it doesn’t look that way at all from the inside.
shortstop
@John:
Not necessarily. We don’t need to get anywhere near a majority to know that there was an organized, systematic approach that involved large numbers of people that went all the way to the top. Nor is it in question that the continual reassignment of priests known to be pedophiles represents, if not an official policy, at least a habitual practice of many decades in which many, many folks were involved.
It’s interesting to see you mention western countries–which, of course, tend to be places in which the average level of education, expectations about individual rights and sensibilities that lean against authoritarianism make it more difficult to cover up widespread abuse indefinitely. If and when abuse scandals begin to break in undeveloped countries, where the faithful are poorer and rely more on the church for physical as well as spiritual sustenance, they may make what’s happened in Europe, the U.S. and Australia seem like drops in the bucket.
@joe from Lowell:
Thank you for getting around to not having a problem with criticizing the church for its policy of trying to hush up these crimes. Despite your outburst above about what you do or don’t do off the blog, none of us have failed to notice what you haven’t done here.
As I noted above, it’s impossible to look at the case of the Christian Brothers in Australia as well as what happened in Ireland without concluding that the conspiracy occurred before and during the fact as well as afterward.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
Again, I could find this exact quote from a “WTC Mosque” thread. “Nobody’s saying they don’t have the right to build it…”
Yes, because if bigotry is expressed in a different manner, it’s not bigotry.
You know, some of us think that bigotry is wrong, period, full stop. Not just wrong against some favored groups. Wrong.
We’re called “liberals.”
Amanda in the South Bay
@joe from Lowell:
Jesus fucking Christ, can we not smear people with terms like “teabagger” just cause we disagree with them? What point is there to smear people you disagree with as conservatives, if not to shut down argument?
BrianM
@joe from Lowell: I’d bet a lot that Kenneth would also say something like this to a Pentecostal: “We have every right to call your belief in a sky-daddy—and that you’re possessed by the Holy Spirit when you’re actually babbling random shit—stupid.” That is, I don’t think he’s any more bigoted toward Catholics than toward any Christian, Moslem, etc.
Which makes all your furor kind of besides the point.
There are lots more interesting things you could be saying.
shortstop
@Bubblegum Tate: Horrifying, isn’t it? There was quite a bit of this in Ireland among older believers, believe it or not.
eemom
1. I don’t think you can so easily dismiss that claim as “false” when the result — the obvious and foreseeable result — of the cover up was to enable the abuse to continue.
2. There are many other instances in which abuse of children by the Church or its instrumentalities WAS widespread and organized, as with the “Christian Brothers” orphanages and the Irish laundries.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
Uh, yeah, you’re trying way too hard.
Ah, that must be why you wrote how offensive my comment was.
Uh, dumbass, “revelation?” This scandal got blown open because of Catholics who were criticizing their Church. My aunt and uncle – two of the most devout people I’ve ever met, people who spend their weekends visiting people in prison – founded their town’s “Voice of the Faithful” chapter. “Revelation?” You flatter yourself beyond all possible reason.
Wow, you really are an emotional thing, aren’t you?
joe from Lowell
@arguingwithsignposts:
You are willfully deluding yourself. Read the damn thread.
Do you have any problem with any of this? Why are you refusing to acknowledge that it’s here?
srv
Yeah, it’s just a few bad apples. Only 2000 claims (obviously golddiggers) in the Netherlands alone. Even more in Ireland.
Anyone who knows the Catholic Church knows that The Church is not the flock. The Church is the body of people who run and operate the institution, those who have taken vows. This institution ignored and protected the institution wrt child rape for as long as we can dig into it. And note that – when you read news accounts about the church, it’s not reported as rape, child abuse, or even molestation, it’s reported as “abuse.” You know, the kind the drunk guy in a wifebeater does to his wife on COPS.
I have a relative who left the seminary because he and others there were molested, another who legally defended his diocese in these cases, and growing up 30 years ago this activity shit was widely whispered about amongst Catholic teens and adults but never publicly talked about. Priests mysteriously disappeared, only to return to another city later.
That’s what really kills me about this – A LOT of people knew about this stuff. A family member, on a parents school council in the 70’s, would ask every priest, brother, sister and lay person about their history and knowledge of abuse, and check with people in their former posts – forced to do his own vetting because they couldn’t trust a major US diocese. Faced with that problem, the parish priest & school principal figured out a nifty way to keep him from attending meetings. They banned him from the school.
And that kind of shit was widely supported by the local flock/fuckheads.
Some Catholics just can’t get their heads around it. They think of themselves as “The Church” and run around defending it, but run from taking ANY responsibility for it. They see any attack on the institution as an attack on themselves.
It all gets easier to understand when you realize many Catholics make even lousier Christians than their non-Catholic peers. It’s inherent in their authoritarian belief-system, something conditioned into them since they were kids. Too bad there really isn’t a hell, it would be so much more enjoyable dealing with them.
shortstop
@joe from Lowell:
That must be one of those things you do off the blog. Because this is the first time you’ve done it in this thread.
And you still get it wrong.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
When did I say anything about your rights? You have the right to say anything your sophomoric mind can come up with
I’m not interested in having a theological discussion with you. But as you well know, it’s not your disagreement with Catholicism’s theology that I object to.
J
@joe from Lowell:
Again: the Murphy Commission was deliberately instituted as separate from the Irish State. Consequently (and this is the crux), diplomatic protocol does not apply.
This means that, formally speaking, the Vatican would be justified in not responding at all. And thus, faced with the choice between doing the right thing and hiding behind technicalities, the Vatican chooses… you guessed it.
This is exactly why the Irish public is rightfully pissed off, the more so because the Catholic Church continues to claim their very special moral superiority.
joe from Lowell
@Kenneth:
Reverend Wright never said anything about white people remotely comparably to the extreme bigotry you’ve been wallowing in all day.
joe from Lowell
@eemom: Props.
@arguingwithsignposts: Kenneth, I hope you will recognize, isn’t failing to make this distinction out of mere confusion. The denunciation of “the bad people” – in this case, religious believers – is the point for him.
shortstop
@eemom: In his insistence that the systematic nature of the crime is all after the fact, Joe is assiduously avoiding discussion of both the Christian Brothers and the Ryan Commission report.
And of course, as you note, the very policy of reassigning known predatory priests is proof of widespread complicity in current and future abuse–unless, as Joe is almost certain to argue, one could not reasonably be expected to know that a pedophile is extremely likely to repeat his crimes if given access to a new set of children.
joe from Lowell
@John:
Not quite right. Replace “hierarchy” with “clergy” or “church,” and that would be my point. I’m sick of tired of seeing people who, through malice or lack of care, denounce my parish priest, cand millions of decent, innocent people throughout the world, for actions they had nothing to do with. I don’t disagree with the notion that there were policies from on high that were wrong, or even that the hierarchy that endorsed these policies should be blamed in a corporate sense.
I also dispute the notion, which people seem to have backed away from, that the Church, hierarchy, or any group whatsoever, engaged in a conspiracy to molest children. That was not the crime of which the hierarchy and certain individual bishops are guilty, and I object when people smear the church as pro-pedophilia.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
I defy you to find a single comment in which I stated that “the vast majority of people criticizing the church… were slamming average laypeople.”
When you cannot, I’d like an apology, and a discussion of your misapprehension of my argument led your thinking astray.
JMC_in_the_ATL
@joe from Lowell: What does it matter to the abused kid if his abuser was part of an active conspiracy or a reactionary cover up? Does one option get him a better class of therapist or make his adult sexual relationships less fraught?
joe from Lowell
@Bubblegum Tate:
I think the people you are talking about are a small minority, with an outsized microphone.
They are infuriating, and there are too many of them, but there aren’t “plenty” of them. There are some.
joe from Lowell
@srv:
This is extremely funny.
There is, literally, a 2000-year-running debate about this. Here in Lowell, a Polish Catholic parish once drove a newly-assigned priest away from their church in a hail of stones because they objected to the diocese picking their parish priest for them.
But here you go, “everyone know that…”
Good Lord.
joe from Lowell
@Roger Moore:
It would be better to criticize the United States government. Better still to criticize the Bush administration. Not only were most Americans not involved; most people in the government and most people in the Army weren’t even involved.
It would be similarly better to criticize the Vatican, or John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger, and the specific bishops and cardinals caught out in bad behavior.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
There are two possible ways to take the absence of an “I’m opposed to kitten-stomping” statement.
An honest, intelligent person would conclude that the utterly non-controversial nature of that statement renders it unnecessary for anyone to have to make it, outside of extraordinary circumstances.
A dishonest, hackish person with an agenda, or with an extraordinary level of prejudice, would look at the absence of that statement from someone making an argument about, say, a particular animal shelter, and convince herself that the absence is best understood as an endorsement of kitten-stomping.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
Nope, I get it right. The abuse was not organized. The coverup was organized. The abuse was incidental, individual acts by individual people.
shortstop
@joe from Lowell:
You’ll feel less sick and tired if you stop taking everything so personally. Almost everything you’ve said in this thread–really, read back–is an emotional whine about the extent of the bias you believe you suffer during discussions of what is one of the largest, and in large part avoidable, religious scandals in history. And for every bona fide religious bigot who makes no distinction among Catholics, there are many, many people who rightfully and righteously slam the church’s handling of this. (That handling includes not just the hierarchy, but those non-abusive parish priests who knew and know of their colleagues’ crimes and nevertheless kept and keep quiet about them.)
Your inability to correctly assess the size both groups is a reflection of your own prejudices and self-interests, not of reality. Your insistence on focusing almost completely on the first group, rather than the second, shines a pretty bright light on your priorities.
It only seems people have “backed away” because you’re a slow reader who routinely ignores things you don’t want to take on. You’ve been invited several times to explain how the institutionalized abuse in the Ryan Commission Report and among Christian Brothers institutions (for two examples), as well as the practice of reassigning priests who are known abusers, can reasonably be interpreted as other than a purposeful conspiracy to continue abuse in the present and future. Indeed, unless you believe that all priestly abuse has ceased, it’s hard to see how you think the church’s current policies on punishment and investigation are other than a willful refusal to prevent future abuse–which itself is only about half a step from actual conspiracy, if we’re feeling generous.
As for “smearing the church as pro-pedophilia,” you’ll have to show me where anyone said that. Many have reasonably noted that the church as an institution has dealt with this issue atrociously and continues to do so. It appears that until someone can record the pope sitting down with the brass and yelling, “Let’s all fuck the kids, boys!” you will insist that top-down policies and practices that enable, protect, cover up, clear future obstacles from, refuse to cooperate with the civil investigation and prosecution of child abuse are not actively contributing to the problem. Most people will disagree with you on that–including a surprising number of fellow Catholics who worry much less than you do about being unfairly painted and confine the vast majority of their worry to the well-being and very lives of children.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
And I think most people see this as a distinction without a difference. I don’t really care whether the conspiracy within the Church was to molest children or only to protect molesters. I suppose that the crime would have been even worse and more wide-spread had they been actively supporting child molestation, but what they did is bad enough. Either way, children were being raped, and the hierarchy cared far more about protecting its own prestige than its most vulnerable parishioners. It’s a sign of a deep sickness within the Church, one bad enough that I doubt the patient can survive the treatment.
shortstop
Although some progress has been made in developed countries in slowing down this tragedy, we can safely change your verb tense to the present throughout this sentence.
eemom
@joe from Lowell:
I would appreciate it if you would respond to the point above, i.e.: when the cover-up was accomplished by reassigning pedophiles to new parishes with new children, where they were obviously going to molest AGAIN……how are those who perpetrated the cover up not also guilty of “organizing” ongoing abuse??
I just don’t see how you can deny that.
shortstop
@joe from Lowell:
Who incidentally and individually ran workhouses, industrial schools and orphanages in which mass sexual abuse (as well as extreme physical abuse) was part of the daily agenda.
Who, after being found to be pedophiles, incidentally and individually reassigned themselves to new parishes to prey on a new group of victims–a neat trick, getting that paperwork through solo!
Who incidentally and individually refused to allow transparency–or in most cases until recently and in selected countries, participation by civil authorities–in the investigation and punishment of priests who had been accused and were still interacting with children, or of the church’s policies toward the same.
You are willfully ignorant of the known facts…or willfully lying. Does anyone care which anymore?
srv
@eemom:
It must be a strange universe for him to live in, where you believe that you are The Church, the local flock is responsible for priests (otherwise we’d stone him), and Who-Could-Have-Known all the bad things parish priests, bishops and Vatican hierarchy would do?
At what point do these people become self-aware?
Ruckus
@Karmakin:
This. THIS. THIS!!
It is what is behind every group that thinks it is better than anyone else.
If I belong to the group and I am good then the group can not be bad. Because if some of the group is bad and I am a member of the group then I am bad. And I’m not bad so the group can not be bad. And if the leaders are bad and I’m a follower then I’m just an idiot. And I’m not an idiot so the leaders can’t be bad.
If I try to continue this circular logic any farther my head is going to spin off my neck.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
It is what is behind every group that thinks it is better than anyone else.
Should read:
It is what is behind every group or member of a group that thinks they are better than anyone else.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
I don’t think you can cleanly separate the actions of a hierarchy from those of the people it represents. One of the principles of our form of government is that the government is working on behalf of the people. Those same people can’t turn around and disclaim responsibility for what the government does, even if it’s not something we asked for. Part of our responsibility as citizens is to hold our government accountable, both at and between elections. Abu Ghraib couldn’t have happened without our collective acquiescence, so it is our collective responsibility.
pragmatism
The best way to add insult to injury is when you’re signing a cast.
aimai
Institutional Coverup? Two Words/One Name: Cardinal Law. This is clearly some kind of sore point for Joe From Lowell whose comments I generally enjoy but nobody within spitting distance of Boston and the very well publicized fall out from the Church’s institutional response to pedophilia has the right to deny that the Church is the Church is the Church. It is fully organized, it funds its Priests, it used to pay for their retirements, it punishes those who deviate publicly from accepted dogma, and it protects those, like Law himself, who fall afoul of the civil authorities. You can’t tell the dancer from the dance. You can’t separate the hierarchy from its repression of those lowest on the rungs of the ladder.
aimai
Glinda
@Joey Maloney: You got that right!
I had a friend in elementary school, a girl with cerebral palsy, who was molested by the assistant priest to our local pastor. Apparently that sick idiot thought that cerebral palsy equated with “mentally disabled”. She got back at him several years later in a rather grand way: she destroyed the sacristy and left a note about the guy.
It was all hushed up and he was transferred.
Smurfhole
I’m another liberal Catholic who finds the anti-Catholic bigotry in this thread- and on this blog in general- offensive.
I notice that no one actually stood up and told Joe from Lowell that they agreed with him that the comments smearing all Catholics- comments he quoted repeatedly- were offensive and out of place. That, in and of itself, says a great deal about the agenda of the overwhelmingly militant-atheist commentariat here.