Cold Calls from the Pope Raise Eyebrows/John Paul II Canonized

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**SilverMK2**

When he makes a call to the police letting them know where to pick up all the preists the church has hidden away after they abused the people in their care, along with all the evidence and the priests who helped cover things up, then I might start making a significant change in my views on the catholic church...

**SilverMK2**

LordofHats wrote:
I think for Francis to do that, he'd really need to get the rest of the church leadership on board, which I'm guessing right now they're not. While he could probably do that, it would tear the Vatican apart.

It's cold hearted, but assuming Francis wants to reform the church rather than schism it, he needs to play cards close to his chest. Right now the threat of blowing that open is probably more useful than actually doing it.

Given that most of the church leadership would probably be going to jail, it would actually be the quickest way to reform things.

Besides, aren't catholics supposed to be big on confessing their sins?

**SilverMK2**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
SilverMK2 wrote:
Besides, aren't catholics supposed to be big on confessing their sins?

If you're going to bash religion at least attempt to understand it a little first

Or perhaps you could learn to differentiate between obvious flippancy and "bashing" a religion.

**SilverMK2**

WarOne wrote:
The Catholic Church fully admitting this would probably bankrupt the vast majority of dioceses as they flounder under wave after wave of lawsuits. Higher officials who are indicted would probably cloister at the Vatican as priests divest themselves of the Church and/or go into hiding in order to escape prosecution/persecution.

The admittance itself would obliterate the Catholic Church, dissolving it for all intents and purposes from existing in places that would seek active prosecution.

If your organisation institutionally hides and supports criminals responsible for, lets face it, crimes that are considered to be amongst the worst possible to be committed upon another human being over the course of who knows how many years by who knows how many people (oh, wait, the catholic church knows!), I for one would suggest that your organisation has every need of being ripped to pieces.

Imagine if this happened in any other organisation - a bank, a chain of schools, a charity, etc... they would not be able to cower behind an old book and carry right on doing what they are doing. They would, quite rightly, be raided by the police, shut down and so on until all the (suspected) guilty people had been rounded up and the evidence collected and trials could commence. And the entire world would cheer.

Why should the catholic church continue to survive, perpetuate its crimes, shield the guilty and hide or dismiss the victims?

**SilverMK2**

WarOne wrote:
A very good question. An organization claiming over 1 billion members with majority populations in significant quantities on 4 continents (almost all of South America, Mexico, Central South Africa, Southern and Central Europe) does a lot of good as well as bad. Can you condone what they did? No. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The living victim count is probably in the thousands (we will discount older records beyond the 20th and 21st century for argument sake as we're talking more about a modern paradigm and expectations in a modern world).

But ending the Catholic Church would cause more harm than good. Religion is a very powerful institution and mechanism in society. The Church being run out of the United States and Western nations (assuming that is as far as the Church gets prosecuted as I see no movements in other nations in other parts of the world taking up the same initiative to punish the Church) would only have far reaching negative consequences. Detractors of course would win, but what about the losers? Where do Catholics go to pray? Any attempt to start up a new Catholic institution in America would be met with the possibility of more sanctions through lawsuits and persecution (almost how Scientology are seen but under a different context). As Catholics have to believe and pray through the conventions of the Catholic Church, where would this scenario of meting out justice end? The Vatican certainly would not allow the United States to extradite it's own leadership for punishment. And many other parts of the world would certainly not approve of Western nations attempting to dissolve an institution that for many is a positive or central part of their life.

Personally I see any such investigation and resulting lawsuits stripping out several layers of senior priests and catching a number of priests still working in various communities. Depending on the numbers, which again only the Catholic Church can really know, and how the church leaders elect to fight, I would actually imagine a large proportion of the remaining catholic church would simply elect to cut off the rotten branches and either break away into their own organisation(s), or disown those involved and essentially revolt against the corruption, kick out those the police want and hand them over to the authorities along with the evidence and try their best to bend over backwards to both be and appear extremely sorry and helpful towards any investigations.

The simple solution in short would not work. It's an ideal to end the Church, but more likely it will continue to persevere.

I would not say it is ideal to end the church, but it is not like religious schisms haven't happened before. There are more christian sects than there pages in the bible...*

*may not be factually accurate and page count varies depending on bible edition, print size, page size, etc

Edit: fixed quotes.