Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sun Dec 04, 2011 9:53 pm

Seth wrote:
Gawdzilla wrote:They don't keep their promises because they're all cronies in this this. There are no innocent priests.
Mindless bigotry.
Whatever. Don't you have a meeting to go to?
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by amused » Sun Dec 04, 2011 9:55 pm

Gawdzilla wrote:
Seth wrote:
Gawdzilla wrote:They don't keep their promises because they're all cronies in this this. There are no innocent priests.
Mindless bigotry.
Whatever. Don't you have a meeting to go to?
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Svartalf » Sun Dec 04, 2011 9:56 pm

Seth wrote:
Svartalf wrote:Isn't Seth head of a NAMBLA chapter?
Fuck you, you asshole. That's an insult that would get the shit beaten out of you if you had the courage to say it to my face, which you don't. How dare you!
Straight direect and unequivocal personal attack and name calling to my facetious comment? I win

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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Seth » Sun Dec 04, 2011 9:56 pm

JimC wrote:What Seth plays down, much to his discredit, is the systematic way the abuse was covered up, and the abusers protected, not just by a few rogue elements, but systematically, by the church hierarchy as a whole. It happened, Seth, and if you want to be in denial about it, then fuck off!
You allege this, but you have no proof of this. When you say the "church hierarchy as a whole" you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, and it strains credulity to assert that none of those hundreds of thousands of people in the church hierarchy had a problem with the abuse and remained knowingly silent for 50 years.

It's far more rational to conclude that a few Bishops and Archbishops were exceedingly complicit in covering up abuse and shifting criminal priests around, that they concealed the problem from higher authority as well as they possibly could, and that's what the evidence actually shows. Those who were directly involved in concealing such crimes certainly are culpable, but to say that the entire church hierarchy is responsible is more mindless bigotry based on a dearth of evidence that "the entire church hierarchy" knew of and deliberately concealed such actions.

Not to mention the fact that many of the clerics who did have knowledge are no longer in those positions of power and many of them are dead.

You say it happened, but you cannot prove this widespread culpability. Where you can prove that someone was specifically involved, then I will agree with you that they deserve to be punished, but again, you cannot tar the whole Catholic church, and all its members, with the same broad brush and remain credible. Doing so only proves mindless bigotry, not facts.
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sun Dec 04, 2011 9:56 pm

:whistle:
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Seth » Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:00 pm

Svartalf wrote:
Seth wrote:
Svartalf wrote:Isn't Seth head of a NAMBLA chapter?
Fuck you, you asshole. That's an insult that would get the shit beaten out of you if you had the courage to say it to my face, which you don't. How dare you!
Straight direect and unequivocal personal attack and name calling to my facetious comment? I win

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You bet your ass it is, fuckwit. And I'll do it if I ever see you in person, I guarantee you that. That was no facetious comment, it was a direct unequivocal personal attack, and an intolerable one at that. Take care that I never meet you, because you have a thrashing coming if I ever do. I can take a lot of insults, but that was beyond the pale of civilized behavior and I won't tolerate it.
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by klr » Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:01 pm

Seth wrote:
Gawdzilla wrote:They don't keep their promises because they're all cronies in this this. There are no innocent priests.
Mindless bigotry.
All the evidence - all the reports - is replete with stories where priests and other clergy could have done a lot more to stop or expose what they knew was happening. They weren't alone in this complicity of course, but they were very well placed to make a difference. Maybe they were just people of their time, people who did not dare to question the (very wide) authority of the Church. But then the Church itself was responsible for creating and sustaining that state of affairs in the first place.
Seth wrote:
JimC wrote:What Seth plays down, much to his discredit, is the systematic way the abuse was covered up, and the abusers protected, not just by a few rogue elements, but systematically, by the church hierarchy as a whole. It happened, Seth, and if you want to be in denial about it, then fuck off!
You allege this, but you have no proof of this. When you say the "church hierarchy as a whole" you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, and it strains credulity to assert that none of those hundreds of thousands of people in the church hierarchy had a problem with the abuse and remained knowingly silent for 50 years.
See above on the near-universal position of subordination to the Church. If you didn't live through it, or know people who did, you may find it difficult to comprehend or accept this, but that is not my problem.

As for evidence, there's plenty of it. This report alone has over 100 MB of PDFs to download:

http://www.childabusecommission.ie/
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Svartalf » Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:05 pm

Seth wrote:
Svartalf wrote:
Seth wrote:
Svartalf wrote:Isn't Seth head of a NAMBLA chapter?
Fuck you, you asshole. That's an insult that would get the shit beaten out of you if you had the courage to say it to my face, which you don't. How dare you!
Straight direect and unequivocal personal attack and name calling to my facetious comment? I win

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You bet your ass it is, fuckwit.
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Gawd » Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:08 pm

Gawdzilla wrote:
Gawd wrote:
klr wrote:
Gawd wrote:
Schneibster wrote::wtf:

I had no idea he was being that out front about it. I'd think that would be admissible in court.
What court? The US refuses to be a member of the International Criminal Court so the US has no jurisdiction or standing to touch the Pope.
The US has nothing to do with it. There are plenty of people outside the US who would like to see the Pope and most of the RC hierarchy on trial, and many live in countries that are members of the ICC. The ICC is irrelevant, because the Pope and his coterie seem somehow to be beyond any legal mechanism on the planet.

Take your US-bashing elsewhere, FFS.
It has everything to do with the Pope. Do you seriously think another country like Britain would prosecute the Pope when it refuses to prosecute Tony Blair for war crimes? The Pope is safe.
Jesus fucking Christ, do you read the posts you respond to? You're making yourself look worse than anyone else could. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Just what don't you like about what I wrote? The fact that I'm right or the fact that you are just blowing hot air at the Pope?

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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:11 pm

Maybe it the fact that you post with out a clue as what you're responding to, Dawg.
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Tero » Mon Dec 05, 2011 12:11 am

Gawdzilla wrote:Maybe it the fact that you post with out a clue as what you're responding to, Dawg.
That looks funny. Are you sure English is your native talk? I can't tell what's wrong with it other than without is one word.

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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Mon Dec 05, 2011 12:19 am

Tero wrote:
Gawdzilla wrote:Maybe it the fact that you post with out a clue as what you're responding to, Dawg.
That looks funny. Are you sure English is your native talk? I can't tell what's wrong with it other than without is one word.
English is my second tongue. Merkin is my first.
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Hermit » Mon Dec 05, 2011 12:49 am

Seth wrote:...the church has cooperated fully with criminal investigations and has defrocked those convicted.
Wherever it had no choice. Meanwhile, it keeps furiously working at putting hurdles in the way of the discovery and prosecution by secular authorities of the criminals among its ranks. This was made abundantly clear when a letter addressed to the Bishops by the Papal Ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Luciano Storero, instructed them to withhold evidence or suspicion of child abuse from police on grounds of "serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature". This letter was an explicit rejection of the Irish Bishops' proposal for a new policy to make new policy the reporting of suspected crimes to secular authorities mandatory.

That letter was written in 1997, and much has been said and written on the matter of paedophilia and rapes by Catholic clergy, and the Vatican's approach to the problem since then. Many of the utterances were soothing words, aimed at assuring the flock that the Vatican has changed its attitude. In an address to the Irish Bishops in 2006, for instance, the Pope commented on the sexual abuse by his clerics, exhorting the Bishops: "to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected". Nothing has changed, though. Previous pontifical pronouncements about excommunicating anyone who dares to take matters of sexual abuse by the clergy to secular authorities have never been revoked to this day, and as recently (March 2010), as in his pastoral letter to the Irish Catholics, the Pope was specific that the failure in need of addressing was restricted to a "failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person." (My bolding)

I have yet to encounter a single unambiguous statement that the Vatican and its minions will no longer actively resist having to bring clergy accused of criminal acts to the attention of secular courts. Now, as always, the Catholic Church regards itself as a law unto itself, that is to say only subject to laws of its own making - canonical law. Now, as always, the Catholic Church regards itself as superior and beyond the reach of secular laws. Despite evasive and ambiguous pronouncements to the contrary, nothing at all has changed.
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by Seth » Mon Dec 05, 2011 2:10 am

Seraph wrote:
Seth wrote:...the church has cooperated fully with criminal investigations and has defrocked those convicted.
Wherever it had no choice. Meanwhile, it keeps furiously working at putting hurdles in the way of the discovery and prosecution by secular authorities of the criminals among its ranks. This was made abundantly clear when a letter addressed to the Bishops by the Papal Ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Luciano Storero, instructed them to withhold evidence or suspicion of child abuse from police on grounds of "serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature". This letter was an explicit rejection of the Irish Bishops' proposal for a new policy to make new policy the reporting of suspected crimes to secular authorities mandatory.
An in that letter, Storero points out that the issue of sexual abuse is being studied at higher levels at the Vatican, and that to accept a proposed document prior to the Holy See promulgating canonical regulations on the matter, would be premature and would be prejudicial against a Bishop who took unauthorized action according to the proposal. Therefore, the Bishops of Ireland are merely (and clearly) told that "the procedures established by the Code of Canon Law must be meticulously followed." There is NOTHING in that letter suggesting in ANY WAY that the Holy See was "rejecting" the Irish Bishop's proposals, it merely states that the proposal is a "study document" that cannot become canon law without the requisite review of the Vatican. Once again cherry-picked documents are presented and then cast in a false light. As you say, this letter is from 1997, and since that time the Vatican has taken many steps to resolve the matter. This letter only tells the Irish Bishops not to hare off on their own by trying to dictate Canon Law to the Vatican, nothing more.
That letter was written in 1997, and much has been said and written on the matter of paedophilia and rapes by Catholic clergy, and the Vatican's approach to the problem since then. Many of the utterances were soothing words, aimed at assuring the flock that the Vatican has changed its attitude. In an address to the Irish Bishops in 2006, for instance, the Pope commented on the sexual abuse by his clerics, exhorting the Bishops: "to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected". Nothing has changed, though.
This claim by you is complete nonsense, as many things have changed, including the child-safety and security policies of the church, from the top down.

In that letter the Pope said:
In the exercise of your pastoral ministry, you have had to respond in recent years to many heart-rending cases of sexual abuse of minors. These are all the more tragic when the abuser is a cleric. The wounds caused by such acts run deep, and it is an urgent task to rebuild confidence and trust where these have been damaged. In your continuing efforts to deal effectively with this problem, it is important to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected and, above all, to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes.
You claim "nothing has changed," but this is patently not true.
Previous pontifical pronouncements about excommunicating anyone who dares to take matters of sexual abuse by the clergy to secular authorities have never been revoked to this day,
Prove it.
and as recently (March 2010), as in his pastoral letter to the Irish Catholics, the Pope was specific that the failure in need of addressing was restricted to a "failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person." (My bolding)
Again, absolutely false. Here is what the Pope actually wrote in the document cited:
Only by examining carefully the many elements that gave rise to the present crisis can a clear-sighted diagnosis of its causes be undertaken and effective remedies be found. Certainly, among the contributing factors we can include: inadequate procedures for determining the suitability of candidates for the priesthood and the religious life; insufficient human, moral, intellectual and spiritual formation in seminaries and novitiates; a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures; and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person. Urgent action is needed to address these factors, which have had such tragic consequences in the lives of victims and their families, and have obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing.

5. On several occasions since my election to the See of Peter, I have met with victims of sexual abuse, as indeed I am ready to do in the future. I have sat with them, I have listened to their stories, I have acknowledged their suffering, and I have prayed with them and for them. Earlier in my pontificate, in my concern to address this matter, I asked the bishops of Ireland, “to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected, and above all, to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes” (Address to the Bishops of Ireland, 28 October 2006).

With this Letter, I wish to exhort all of you, as God’s people in Ireland, to reflect on the wounds inflicted on Christ’s body, the sometimes painful remedies needed to bind and heal them, and the need for unity, charity and mutual support in the long-term process of restoration and ecclesial renewal.
He goes on to expressly address the criminal priests:
7. To priests and religious who have abused children

You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals. You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonour upon your confreres. Those of you who are priests violated the sanctity of the sacrament of Holy Orders in which Christ makes himself present in us and in our actions. Together with the immense harm done to victims, great damage has been done to the Church and to the public perception of the priesthood and religious life.

I urge you to examine your conscience, take responsibility for the sins you have committed, and humbly express your sorrow. Sincere repentance opens the door to God’s forgiveness and the grace of true amendment. By offering prayers and penances for those you have wronged, you should seek to atone personally for your actions. Christ’s redeeming sacrifice has the power to forgive even the gravest of sins, and to bring forth good from even the most terrible evil. At the same time, God’s justice summons us to give an account of our actions and to conceal nothing. Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy.
Note in particular the red bolded statements, which is an unambiguous command for priests to submit to the "demands of justice," by which I take him to mean the police and courts of Ireland and "give an account of (their) actions and conceal nothing," as demonstrated by the following excerpt in which he goes on to exhort the Bishops to CONTINUE to cooperate with civil authorities:
To my brother bishops

It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations. I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgement were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness. I appreciate the efforts you have made to remedy past mistakes and to guarantee that they do not happen again. Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence. Clearly, religious superiors should do likewise. They too have taken part in recent discussions here in Rome with a view to establishing a clear and consistent approach to these matters. It is imperative that the child safety norms of the Church in Ireland be continually revised and updated and that they be applied fully and impartially in conformity with canon law.
I have yet to encounter a single unambiguous statement that the Vatican and its minions will no longer actively resist having to bring clergy accused of criminal acts to the attention of secular courts.
That might be because you are failing to actually read and comprehend what the Pope wrote in the material you yourself cited, not to mention all that has occurred since 1997 in that regard. I've highlighted the "unambiguous" statement from the Pope that you've been seeking so that perhaps you can see it through the bias lenses you're operating behind.
Now, as always, the Catholic Church regards itself as a law unto itself, that is to say only subject to laws of its own making - canonical law.
Quite simply not true, as proven by the very letter you yourself cited and I have quoted in context (including the operative statement you elided...supposing, I guess, that I would not check your sources and actually read the letter carefully).
Now, as always, the Catholic Church regards itself as superior and beyond the reach of secular laws.
Absolutely untrue.
Despite evasive and ambiguous pronouncements to the contrary, nothing at all has changed.
It doesn't get any less ambiguous than"Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence."
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Re: Pope thinks child buggery isn't so bad

Post by JimC » Mon Dec 05, 2011 3:49 am

Something I need to say.

Although Seth is consistently playing down the past abuse by catholic clergy, and the systematic covering up of that abuse, preferring to regard it as the acts of a few rogues, some people in the thread have gone a little too far in the opposite direction...

1. It is gratuitous, non-funny and unfair to cast aspersions of pedophilia on Seth, just because he is being overly-dismissive of the very real case against the catholic hierarchy. Not a useful argument, and not playing nice...

2. Seth paints far too rosy a picture, but the church has lifted its game recently, although it still has a long way to go. The change has mostly been forced by brave and persistent people within and without the church, and represents a defensive move by the hierarchy rather than a true moral imperative, but it would be wrong to say there has been no change.

3. It is also wrong to say or imply that all or most catholic clergy are involved or complicit, even if far too many are, given the supposed ethical standards they pupport to represent. I have known many catholic clergy over the years, and the majority, although seriously woo affected, are good blokes in their own way...
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