French clergy sexually abused over 200,000 children since 1950, report finds

It is widely known that childhood sexual abuse often leads to promiscuity (which often leads to prostitution and/or pedophilia). Our society doesn't do much in the way of protecting our children and legislators don't care because kids can't vote.

 

I bolded the key words in your post.

I have no issue with Catholics — if I was “attacking” these people you would have a point. But I am not so you don’t.

Did you really just say that someone speaking out against what the Catholic Church is doing is as bad as bigots attacking minority groups not involved, what the literal **** is wrong with you?

 

Do you mean the Pope? The last Pope was in fact fired for not acting quickly and decisively enough against this problem. The one there now has done alright but he had little choice. We will see what happens with these new developments

The Catholic Church needs major reform. I wouldn't be surprised to see another Council

 

This is what happens when you try and mix the authority of organized religion into spirituality, which should be a deeply personal experience.

aurhority and power corrupts, especially when it deals with power over the afterlife.

 

Do you also blame all cops for what some do?
How about white guilt?


And isn't it "funny" how the Catholic church embraces it's pedophiles, but hates homo's.
Amazing indeed.

 

If you truly meant the start of your post you would have never typed "Organized religion is a plague upon this Earth"

Blind hatred is what a I am discussing atm.

 

I have no idea how any one could read what i wrote and read that i was being critical of one person.

 

Organized religion causes issues like this — where they operate outside of the law or completely become the law.

That is the issue here

It isn’t blind, it’s targeted at their actions

 

"..including ONE..." I meant the one included there

 

Color me unimpressed with the content of this thread. .
I am having real trouble finding posts in this thread to 'like' in this thread. There is a fine line between blaming the institution behind Catholicism and blaming Catholicism or organised religion or Christianity itself. It seems pretty important to pick one's words rather carefully here.

Its not about Catholic priests and its not about gays. In my view it is ultimately about a huge unchecked bureaucratic response cloaked in very unbureaucratic cloth, designed to protect the institutions reputation, specific individuals, the power and the money represented behind the 'brand' and rationalize the whole thing as also protecting the 'faith' and the kids from 'unpleasantness of reliving it. Its actually pretty predictable bureaucratic reaction, considering that for centuries, there was a total lack of any accountability for any scandal. Yours (post #9) is the only one so far that even looks for the line, let alone trying to tread carefully but I will keep looking.

 

It is about all Catholic priests in France and the Catholic church as an institution (not it's faith as practiced by an individual). You're missing the part that the protection of the institutions reputation was done with the help of everybody in it. You can sell me the idea that some of the priest did not know due to being helplessly ignorant. But you can't sell me the idea that the fast majority of the priests there were totally oblivious about the wide spread abuse that went on for decades, when they were there EVERY DAY. it's been calculated your average pedo priest made 80 victims. No way such a person is able to hide that. Get real. They all simply kept their mouths shut for reasons I do not care about, and with that I have no problem in labelling all them priests at a minimum partially responsible for the pedophilia for refusing to stop it.

 

So one religion has an issue so you are against all of them.. I go back to my original point.

 

My issues with the current Pope are more then just this issue.. If you read the article this goes back 70 years. How many Popes were in power during that time?

 

In walking away from the Catholic church over 25 years ago, it wasn't because of 'faith'. At the time I saw too many hypocrisies in the organized religion itself and I could no longer feel good about being a part of it.

 

The Catholic Church is one of the most corrupt organizations in history. Recently they have literally become a criminal pedophile conspiracy.

 

God was where it always is: in the imaginations of its followers.

 

I wouldn’t classify hiding pedophiles as a problem. It’s a ****ing catastrophe.

I am against organized religion for tons of reasons, this is just one of them. Again I am targeting them due to their actions so your original point does not stand

 

I can't believe the RCC has allowed this to happen. I grew up as a strict Catholic, alter boy in a Catholic grammar school, and nothing even remotely like that happened to me or my brothers.

This stuff only hurts their cause.

 

I was born and raised Catholic (I'm now agnostic). I went to a Catholic school, the church I went to had so many followers that they had to hold mass on Saturday nights, then on Sundays starting at 7:00am and had another mass on the hour until 1:00pm, and then finally a mass at 5:00pm for anyone who missed all the other ones. Just about everyone I knew except for the Jews were Catholic and never, not once did I ever hear a hint of any shady stuff going on with the priests. NEVER. Not a rumor, not a hint, nothing. In fact, I've heard more about Hollywood's perversions with pedophilia than I did at my church. Does Rock Hudson ring a bell? How about Liberace? Hollywood and the entertainment industry made them rich and famous even though it was well known they liked little boys, and that makes them homosexuals at a time when being one was frowned upon. But all that gets ignored. When was the last time anyone called for an investigation into Hollywood's pedo problem?

If you guys want to crack down on the Catholic church's problem, that's fine. But don't forget about Hollywood and our favorite religion of peace - one of them is ignored and mentioning the problem with the other one will get you called a racist. But to the left bashing Catholics is in their DNA, that's why they refer to Islamic refugees as Islamic but refer to illegals at our border as people of color and not their religion. Referring to the illegals as Christians or Catholics would automatically turn many liberals against them.

For the rest of you guys, let's get our definitions straight - being attracted to the opposite sex is called being a homosexual. Being attracted to a minor, be it a boy or a girl, is called pedophilia because we had to call it something. A man being attracted to a young girl is biologically natural but socially unacceptable. A man attracted to a young boy is NOT biologically natural, is socially unacceptable and fits the definition of being a homosexual to a T. So a man attracted to a young girl is called a pedophile, and a man attracted to a young boy is a homosexual pedophile. If pedophilia wasn't considered a crime, then a man attracted to a young boy would just be a homosexual. You guys getting it now?

 

The thing you are most forgetting in your 80 victims analysis, is that so many of them kept very very quiet until AFTER they thought there was a chance to be believed. They are boys, turning into teens, turning into men. They are the very least likely of all victims of sex abuse crimes to tell anyone including their most trusted friends or parents. They suck it up. They had to be prodded . They had to be asked. Of those 80 victims the vast majority did not report the same year, the next year or even five or ten years after the assaults. Like Cosby's victims, you really have rumors, some gossip that hits the priestly ranks that no one wants to believe, and maybe one two or three or five actual reports to that first go to parents who decide to report,, and then go through a hierarchical chain, that leads to these internal 'investigations' and reassignment and counseling, then those rumors - and the number of priests who hear any rumor, are likely go die away, until after the headlines makes a real investigation and some former victims think there is a real reason to think anyone will take what they say seriously. That's when everyone hears these number grow exponentially.

I think you are exaggerating the number of low level clergy that had anything worthy to report. Its mostly higher up the chain, and nobody up there had any reason to offer anything but a strict need-to know policy. Nobody wants to be in that select group either. You say most had to know. My guess is that most really did not know much of anything.

 

Ever hear of the McMartin preschool sexual abuse case? If you keep hammering people to tell you a specific story eventually they'll tell it to you just to make you stop asking.

"Never did anyone do anything to me, and I never saw them doing anything. I said a lot of things that didn't happen. I lied. ... Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn't like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for. ... I felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed that I was being dishonest. But at the same time, being the type of person I was, whatever my parents wanted me to do, I would do."[19]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial

 

And that is NOT where I think the big issue is here. Its sure not a bunch of parents pushing on their boys to tell them that the local priest that they get communion from is touching their kids. Its the opposite. Its boys not wanting to cause a stink and fractures between their mom and that church she loves, even if they are believed. Even worse, if you are twelve, is deciding that one parent is more likely to believe than another. Now that means Mom and Dad fighting about you and that church or how to handle it. Its even worse if you discover you are wrong about which one responds how. It does not have to be a realistic worry, to sit in Joey's head and silence him.

 

You should really look up the word pedophilia — crime or not it is attraction to children. It has nothing to do with the legality of the issue.

Saying a man raping a girl is pedophilia while a man raping a boy is homosexual pedophilia reeks of bias and bigotry.

If a man is married with children and engages only in heterosexual activity except when he rapes a boy you would label him a homosexual pedophile.

That this thread is overrun with people deflecting from the abuses hidden by the church and blaming gay people shows just how pathetic and desperate the real narrative is.

 

Normally, I would not reference myself as it would constitute an ad hominem fallacy, but since you have proffered your empirical observation, I will counter with mine: I went to private middle school and very prestigious all-boys Catholic high school with a high profile in my large NE metro community as well as being known for world-class athletics and sending a number of students to the NFL, NHL, and NBA. In high school, we learned quickly which priests and brothers to avoid, and at all cost not to get caught alone with, like during office hours. This school also had some questionable lay teachers as well. Made you wonder about their vetting process...

Decades later every now and then I'll read about a priest who had multiple allegations against him after his death... never am I surprised when one of those priests or brothers taught at my school. We had one in particular who gave you a choice of discipline: a demerit, a slap, or a kiss. A kiss. From a male adult authority figure. I always took the demerit. Detention was preferable to being touched by an adult whose care I was in. Another would call you in for office hours under the guise of helping you clarify some mistake he claimed you made on an exam or a paper... he would come out from behind his desk and sit in chair right next to you, pulling the chairs together so they were touching... he would then find a reason to put his hand on your knee... Many many reports of incidents specifically with this priest, and others at my school. We had a male lay teacher who used to make gay sex jokes -- to high school sophomores and juniors.

Now, my experience negates yours, but we are a sample size of two, hence our empiricism is meaningless without corroboration. The corroboration exists in the tens of thousands of credible allegations, sealed settlements and NDAs, confidential church records that have been unsealed by warrant, and groups of survivors coming together with vivid details of their abuse. Some of these archbishops and cardinals have gone as far as obstructing justice laughably claiming "separation of church and state," while others have resigned in disgrace or -- rarely, but to the Vatican's credit -- been shown the door. The smug prick Mahoney, Cardinal of LA, finally at least got stripped of his duties (though not his vestment) after multiple refusals to turn over unredacted church personnel records in violation of court orders in the course of an ongoing criminal investigation into the church and its dirty dealings. He was protecting pedophiles, and everyone -- including him -- knew it. The man should have gone to prison. Instead he claimed the church was above the law, citing First Amendment protection and freedom of religion -- that's right, his argument was the freedom of religion permits the church to allow its staff to sexual molest children -- mostly boys, but some girls, too. Mahoney's misdeeds were especially heinous as he was also harboring illegal aliens on church properties -- again citing free exercise of religion -- throughout the diocese, and again thumbing his nose at the rule of law and... well it was no coincidence that the majority of abuse victims in So Cal during his dubious reign were poor Mexican 12-15 year-olds whose families would never go to the authorities because they were illegal aliens. He ran that diocese like he was some kind of mob boss. He is now 85. Soon he will die. If there is a hell, he should be in the express lane.

Red herring: Whataboutism. The topic of this thread is the global criminal pedophile conspiracy of the Catholic Church.

Straw man: There is plenty of criticism of the above. Just not in this thread because it would be off-topic. And I have no idea who you mean by "you guys." I am just one person.

Completely off topic.

 

I think 5, but I doubt they knew of this. These things are more a symptom of an entrenched bureaucracy interested only in preserving itself, and people that take advantage of it.