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 SilverMK2 wrote:

 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?

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.

I'm not a very religious person (and not a Catholic, either), but I do like this Pope. He appears to be a genuinely good person (despite what you might think, that is pretty rare in this world). I just wish we could clone him off a few times to have one for every major religion. I think the world would be a lot better off if every religion had a leader who actually practiced the concept of human kindness to this same extent.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
Imagine receiving a phone call from the Pope

I did, It was late one night I was with my GF...

Oh. Man. I was WAAAAAY off! Sorry.

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.

This 100%. Don't expect even reform minded leaders to want this outcome.

Real politik man.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT: Rather than start two threads on Catholicism in the same day, I'm going to fuse this here, especially since we were already talking about the child abuse scandal.

Pope John Paul II achieves Sainthood in spite of questions concerning his handling of the Catholic sex abuse scandals

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that if he makes a habit of calling individuals to override whatever spiritual instruction they've been given by their local parish priest, he's going to run into some problems pretty fast.

 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?

 AlexHolker wrote:
I might not be a Catholic, but I like that Pope Francis seems to actually be a decent human being. I hope that that is true, and that he's not just another Darth Benedict with a better grasp of PR.

Same here. I find myself reading articles about him just because of that very reason

Just his demeanor and the way he carries himself is so different than Benedict:



vs

 SilverMK2 wrote:


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

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.

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

 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.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

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.

A realistic assessment.

The more likely event to occur is that the pressure to change will eventually be enough to force the church to make a decision between protecting its priests or divesting itself of the bad elements. But a fraternal organization such as the hierarchy of the Church is hesitant to act. Perhaps as newer priests take the reins of power and more scrutiny occurs, there will be a compromise at some point.

In the meantime, it should be the goal of organizations like SNAP working with the UN and regional authorities to keep the Church honest and root out the bad.

Seaward wrote:I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that if he makes a habit of calling individuals to override whatever spiritual instruction they've been given by their local parish priest, he's going to run into some problems pretty fast.

That's what I was thinking. On the one hand, it's cool that he's taking a personal interest in Catholic's lives. On the other this could make for some bad blood brewing.

d-usa wrote:

I think he's grinning cause he just tossed Mace Windu out a window.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
.

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.
?

You really should do some research and familiarize yourself with Penn State.

 LordofHats wrote:

I think he's grinning cause he just tossed Mace Windu out a window.

Or told a young Catholic to embrace his hate.

 cincydooley wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
.

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.
?

You really should do some research and familiarize yourself with Penn State.

And the Horace Mann School in New York. Second best preparatory school in the US according to Forbes magazine. Also the site of decades of child sexual abuse, by multiple members of the staff. Still in business and teaching tomorrow's elites!

Or the Boy Scouts.

 dogma wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

I think he's grinning cause he just tossed Mace Windu out a window.

Or told a young Catholic to embrace his hate.

These two quotes made my day.

 nels1031 wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
.

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.
?

You really should do some research and familiarize yourself with Penn State.

And the Horace Mann School in New York. Second best preparatory school in the US according to Forbes magazine. Also the site of decades of child sexual abuse, by multiple members of the staff. Still in business and teaching tomorrow's elites!

Or the Boy Scouts.

Good call. I completely forgot about Horace Mann. Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't nearly all of the absused kids there scholarship kids?

I don't recall. Most of the accused/victims were never fully named.

If you are on the "Do Not Call" list, can the Pope stil cold call you?

 Easy E wrote:
If you are on the "Do Not Call" list, can the Pope stil cold call you?

Nah, that'd require a mirac...


Nevermind.