Animavore wrote:I would hate if this country ever became religious again. Look at the list of bulllshit that happened as a result of it.
Children raped by prests.
Criminal acts you won't find me defending.
Too scared of threats of hell and shame to tell. Even if they did tell the parents were generally too afraid of shame, excommunication and social exclusion to do anything. The kid might even get beat up and told 'not to tell tales about the Good Father'.
Criminal negligence on the part of parents which you won't find me defending.
Young girls who got raped and pregnant would be accused of being harlots and have their children taken off them while they get sent to the Magdeline Sisters for 're-education' (by the way watch the film The Magdeline Sisters if you haven't already to check out the appalling treatment of young women in these institutions) while the rapist got away. Single mothers, 'promiscuous' girls sent here also.
I've seen it several times. It's a horrible situation, but not reflective of all Catholics or all Catholic priests.
Women married to drunken, abusive and even incestuous men were stuck with their choice because divorce was considered such a mortal sin.
That's a personal choice. Nobody forced them to members of the Catholic church, and they were free to walk away any time they wanted to do so.
People used to cross the street if a priest was walking up the path to clear a way for him.
So? What business is it of yours if people of faith choose to show respect to their priest? Nobody demands that YOU do so, so who cares what the faithful do, it's their free choice.
These are a short list of things that have happened to people in my community. People I know. Lives have been fucked up and ruined and all because of the silence generated when people are afraid of orthodoxy.
Cowardice is its own punishment. And faith is voluntary. Beyond those crimes done to people by force by particular priests even Catholicism in Ireland is a voluntary religion that anyone can reject at any time, particularly nowadays.
Should we tolerate this? I think toleration is the root of the problem here. Now I have strong levels of toleration. I have friends of all shades of life and a richer outlook as a consequence because I don't suffer the close-mindedness that would prevent me taking to a person because of who they are. But I don't and won't tolerate the intolerable.
Of course you should not tolerate such things if they are not peaceable acts and they are being perpetrated against persons against their will. On the other hand, if someone chooses to voluntarily participate in some act of faith, that's their right as a free individual.
But then again the malefactions of some Irish priests are not reflective of the actions of every Catholic on the planet, and not even of the majority of Catholic priests, of whom there are nearly half a million. So far, the count of Catholic priests who have been proven to have engaged in such acts is around 4000. Compare that to the approximately one billion Catholics on earth, that's a very small proportion of evil people who happened to worm their way into the church, generally precisely in order to abuse children because they were pedophiles seeking an organization that gave them access to children, as the result of lax screening and security by the church during the Vatican II reformations of the 60s.
Virtually all of the complaints about pedophile priests come from that period more than 40 years ago, and there are very, very few recent incidents because the church as taken strong measures to protect children as a result of the scandal, and the church is now among the safest organizations on earth for children. But that's not something Atheists are prepared to acknowledge because of their blind, unreasoning hatred of religion in general.
Public schools are thousands of times more risky for children, as demonstrated by the research on public school teacher sex abuse of students, which is estimated to be on the order of five MILLION schoolchildren molested EVERY YEAR.
You might want to redirect some of your outrage at that problem.
I do NOT defend the criminal actions of priests of any religion, or those who actively conspire to protect them from the law, but I also recognize that such malefactors are a very, very small part of an enormous body of people who call themselves "Catholics," (or who may be part of other peaceable religions) and that the overwhelming majority of believers and priests alike are entirely innocent of such wrongdoing and that it is irrational, unreasoning hatred and bias that causes people like you to condemn all Catholics for the crimes of a few.
Have some perspective.
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"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
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