With the argument raging in this State as to whether bishops, criticized in the Murphy Report for failing to act appropriately to complaints of child abuse, should at the very least be asked to stand down I'm very relieved about one thing. Taking my kids out of a Catholic school.
Frankly, I've no idea how much contact children from most schools have with any members of the clergy. But it strikes me that no risk is too small for something as appallingly seismic as this. It's one thing dealing with clerical abuse in the past but the notion that any resultant action will somehow stop these kinds of atrocities against children occurring again in the future strikes me as naive in the extreme. As long as priests, albeit with less power, continue to live an unnatural lifestyle with delusional belief systems, they are likely to continue with the kind of degenerate psychoses that are now being fully revealed.
The bishops complicit in this should not be asked to stand down. They should be made to stand down and they should be made criminally liable.
The catholic church and it's outdated iniquitous ethos should be removed entirely from our education system so that parents do not need to take this unacceptable risk with their children's safety and future.
[deep breath]
Last word to Mark Twain:
Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
6 comments:
Hmmm... so religious belief "causes" kiddie fiddling, as opposed to those with a penchant for such behaviour using an antiquated organisation as an easy means of gaining access to young flesh. Interesting hypothesis.
Presumably there's something inherently "wrong" and "unnatural" with boxing and swimming too, that leads so many coaches from those sports down a similarly dubious route.
Could you maybe do up a bar chart - activities on the x-axis, propensity to kiddie-fiddle on the y-axis that would let us do a comparative analysis?
Does religious belief cause kiddie fiddling? Unlikely but it probably doesn't help, like. If you believe in spirits you might just be tempted to blame them for what you do.
Does enforced celibacy and unfaltering acquiescence from government, community and parents cause kiddie-fiddling? Clearly it causes madness and this is one of the ways it manifests itself.
I respectfully disagree with your view that young men enter the priesthood in order to further their kiddie-fiddling pre-dispositions. I believe the church makes monsters of them. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"unnatural lifestyle with delusional belief systems", nice
Your hypothesis is utterly fucked up.
I'd be amazed if the percentage of priests directly involved in the sexual abuse of children is any different to that of sports coaches.
The key difference is that the position of the prieshood with respect to government and society in general, as well as the secretive nature of a fucked up organisation meant that the perpetrators managed to continue their activities without anyone doing anything about it for an obscenely long period of time.
The big issue here isn't the absolute number of paedophile priests - it's the fucked up secrecy and arrogance of the catholic church hierarchy (assisted by the wanton negligence of a succession of governments) in choosing to do fuck all about .
As such, the solution isn't to impose religion-free schooling - it's to demote the cafflick snake oil merchants to the position in society that they deserve, such that any abuse of power is detected, reported, and closed down very quickly and with extreme prejudice.
If I had my time again I'd prolly reword the sentence "I've no idea how much contact children ... have with any *members* of the clergy" but what's done is done.
It may or may not be true that the *official* percentage of Roman Catholic priests who abuse children and youths is much greater than for other Christian and non-Christian religious leaders but if the *official* figure is, say, 4% you can be sure that there are significantly more unreported cases of clerical abuse than within other organisations.
I can easily provide you with a pie chart but I'd have to make up the numbers if that's cool...
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