Posted on 04/26/2005 7:55:47 AM PDT by gopwinsin04
I'll give it a rest the minute the Church actually starts treating priests that have these kind of allegations against them as potential criminals instead of PR problems. So far there's been no indication that the next round will be handled any differently than the last round.
No the most reprehensible thing he did was even getting shrinks involved in the first place. These people were being accused of one of the single most heinous crimes a person can commit, when information comes to you that someone you have authority over might be a pedophile you don't go to shrinks to find out if they're "healed" you let the cops decide if the allegations are true, if they are they go to jail and you defrock them.
Every institution that has faced this problem and handled it the way the Catholic Church did became enablers or pedophiles and should hang their heads in shame. I'm not denying that the Church isn't alone in this, but they get an extra level of culpability being an institution of moral teaching.
In my opinion there never should have been an opportunity to find out they had gone back to their old ways. Hopefully Benedict XVI will continue down that path and the Church will actually begin to deal with this type of problem in a way that is deserving of the moral authority the Church claims.
The coolest drinking game is to read a Harry Potter book and take a shot every time you read the word "scarlet".
Is not the same thing basically true in the world of Harry Potter? To be sure, since magic users and humans interbreed, the magic users can't quite be termed another "race", but I would not consider that a major distinction.
The key point is that unless a reader has magic users as parents, the reader can't expect any of the spells or other such goodies in the books to work.
Hmmmm...read Harry Potter and risk eternal damnation... uhm... Can I think about this?
One of the big problems in Boston was that the two biggest offenders were also well known in Democrat circles and had powerful friends. In some of the cases, the cops didn't pursue the cases, in others the parents didn't pursue because they didn't want to drag their children through it. The Church couldn't bring a case if the victim didn't want to participate, so the Diocese sent them away to be 'healed'. In order to de-frock someone, they have to have been investigated by the Church and found to have committed egregious offenses. The Boston Archdiocese had defrocked at least one priest, Bill Porter, but I don't know if Geoghan or Shanley had been defrocked. That's something else the new Pope helped to do; make it easier for a Diocese to de-frock a priest.
Some of this problem had to do with the areas of the country, too. In heavily Catholic areas, like here in the Northeast, people looked upon priests as one who could do no wrong, and of whom no questions should be asked. In other parts of the country, especially where there were fewer Catholics folks didn't think that way, at least where I grew up in MS, we didn't. We knew the priests were men who could make mistakes just like anyone else, and we didn't put them up on some sort of pedestal.In the South, I know that priests had been sent to jail. My b-i-l is a priest in MS, and he talks of a former priest sitting in Angola prison right now because several of his brother priests turned him in to the cops. Whenever he comes up for parole, the lib nuns go to the prison to cry and beg for his release, while the priests, one of whom is now in a wheelchair, tell the prison officials not to let him out cause they'd have to shoot him if he were set free because he's never ever admitted that what he did was wrong.
The psychologists were involved because back in the late 60's and up into the 80's that's the way institutions handled these problems. It wasn't just the Catholic Church, though you'd have to be forgiven if you thought so, because that's the way the media presented it. It was part and parcel of the modernization that came out of Vatican II. The Church was trying to solve moral problems with psychology. They failed spectacularly, and frankly, I'm still waiting for some newspaper to question the field of psychology that was responsible for allowing these men back out into the world. Somehow they are never mentioned, though it was their professional advice that was being followed all over the country.
There have been plenty of changes made, and the Dioceses are much more willing to bring a priest up on charges, even with one allegation. Of course, that brings its own problems, and ones with which Benedict XVI is familiar because he also guided the American Bishops in re-tooling their policies to protect a priests identity until there was some creedance to any allegation. There were too many charges, conveniently against long dead priests, or from 'recovered memories', coming out of the woodwork after the Boston Globe had done their stories. Cardinal Ratzinger didn't want these mens' reputations besmirched falsely because once accused, he knew it was hard to get one's good name back.
I can't speak for the experience of others, but in my city where we have some mega-bookstores, the Harry Potter section is usually one shelf away from massive rows of witchcraft books aimed at children, teens and adults. These range from colorful and happy kiddy spell books all the way up to to Necronomicon, Aleister Crowley and Lavey's Satanic Bible. This steaming pagan crap heap proudly takes its place in the "religion" section which is running about at a 90% heresy rate. In the catholicism section, I found a catechism and one lonely George Weigel book among a sea of heretics (Harpur, Greely, Pagels etc.) Rather than condemn a single book or author, I look at the trend and shudder. The average city bookstore is now completely de-catholicized and replaced with a counterfeit occult spirituality. Harry Potter is just one little brick in the massive wall that secular humanism is building between the God's truth and humanity.
I imagine more than a few people became interested in Catholicism after the death of JPII and election of Benedict XVI. God help them if they visited any of these stores in search of greater understanding. And pity the young people who become interested in God and want to buy a simple truthful booklet to read. The light of the Gospels is systematically being snuffed out of the public sphere and this evil is poured into the vacuum.
So the child reading the book could come to believe that he has similar untapped powers. See the danger?
At best, this is run-of-the-mill New Age gnosticism. At worst, it's an invitation to practice wizardry.
Since you see everything from Harry's perspective, you can frequently make bad assumptions about other people and their motivations. This isn't that person X acted evil but turned out good (or vice-versa), it's that Harry makes a bad assumption about person X because of incomplete information, and turns out later to be mistaken.
The books (at least the first four) are primarily mystery stories, and mis-direction as to who the "bad guy" really is, including some red herrings about innocent folks, is a good thing in a mystery. Compare to most kid lit, where you know who the villain is the first time they appear in the story...
Also, Harry continuously breaks the rules, never suffers any consequences, and indeed, is often rewarded for breaking the rules in the end.
I wouldn't say that he never suffers consequences -- he's frequently punished for breaking rules (in many cases, these punishements set up plot points by putting him in a specific location at a time he otherwise wouldn't be there). But what teenage boy (or pre-teen) isn't a little rebellious? In the end, Harry does things for the right reasons, even if he makes mistakes along the way.
Tarot. Seances. Ouija. Fortune-telling, etc.
But again, do a child's interests necessarily congeal into hard belief?
Not necessarily. But if you have children, you know that children are strongly influenced by the stories that they're exposed to.
Is pretending to be a wizard any more harmful than pretending to be Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman?
Yes, because the occult is real.
Yes. Absolutely. A bogus review would be pretty easy to identify.
Additionally, you can find plenty of people here on FR who've had similar experiences. My wife played around with a ouija board once when she was a child, and she swears the planchet moved on its own. She never messed with it again.
Hostage to the Devil reveals the dangers of dabbling in the occult. It's a great book, but absolutely terrifying.
I don't have much experience with Dickens, but I just started Oliver Twist last week - it looks like it won't disappoint.
Sherlock Holmes gives you something to do while waiting for the next HP book. Agatha Christie is also good. The best of British pulp fiction is timeless.
That's usually the root of these kinds of disagreements 8-).
The existence of the demons is a tough thing to prove positively, although the anecdotes can be very convincing and difficult to explain otherwise.
If you're a Christian, the existence of the demonic is easier to believe since there are many references to, and warnings against, occultic practices in Scripture.
I was clearly a victim of dorks that love to condemn people and called themselves Christian. But the truth is the constant condemners aren't really Christians, they don't follow any of the rules. They pretend to know God's will by telling people what kind of music He will and won't accept you listening to, they judge constantly and react very aggresively when judged, they don't attempt to teach.
No I wasn't a societal outcast, I found myself a society, gamers and metal heads. No I chanel my annoyance at the constant condemners in a simple mission: to point out what a bunch of hypocritical assholes they are. I have no problem with Fundamentalists or Catholics, so long as they actually understand the teaching and don't constantly condemn people just because they have different tastes in entertainment.
No you were never in my shoes, you were one of those screwed up kids I mentioined a while ago. You were a wreck going down the wrong path before you ever discovered gaming or metal and now you blame the gaming and the metal, but if you honestly assessed you'd aknowledge the truth, you were on that path before. And I can see it in one sentence " It's amusing now to remember how seriously I took it all at the time", I don't take it serious, it's fun stuff to pass the time, enjoyable music to keep me energized at work, and the method I've used to develop most of my important friendships in life. I listen to Spinal Tap just to make sure I DON'T take it seriously. The only part of the whole thing I take seriously is how people like YOU drive metal fans and gamers away from the faith, people driving others away from the faith is serious, harmless forms of entertainment are not, and anybody that took them serious was a screwed up kid on the path ruin.
I'm 35 years old, married for 13 years, well respected in the local area of my field for my skills, paid hansomely, and not in debt. I think as a man, I understand as a man, and I entertain myself with things made by men. Deal with it.
No the problem is every time the Church got word that some priest was a problem they shipped him off elsewhere and destroyed the evidence. They treated it as a PR problem.
I'll believe there have been changes when I see it. Right now they've added a lot of rules that IF they actually enforce them will take giant leaps towards fixing the problem... IF the actually enforce them. Only time will tell.
No they couldn't. If there's a kid running around who's hair regrows to the previous length the night after it's cut, had windows disappear before his eyes, and all the various other stuff that happened to Harry in the books before he found out he was a wizard then his parents have much bigger fish to fry. He didn't have your normal run of the mill wierdness hapen to him, no big coincidences or anything petty like that, he had high profile unexplainable occurances happen fairly regularly.
No this isn't new age gnosticism, it's a STORY about an IMAGINARY world where wizards really exist and it's purely a genetic trait. The only thing it's an invitation to is buying the merchandising, like any other mass market product it's all about the benjamins.
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