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To: Mad Dawg
For you to make this argument requires excluding the data on the enabling and concealment of sexual misbehavior in the non-Catholic denominations and in the world, and, more seriously, the efforts in the non-Catholic world to declare perversion normal and good.

I've not gone into the world as a whole in this discussion because it's fallen and has been since Eve was corrupted and Adam listened to her instead of God. The condemnation of such worldly behavior as sexual immorality is a given, and such condemnation cannot possibly be detailed thoroughly enough on this forum.

As far as apparently systematic, widespread concealment and protection of sexually immoral church priests, pastors, preachers or other individuals in positions of authority, who sexually abuse minor congregants or even congregants of any age at all, you're going to have a hard time demonstrating anything on the scale of the Roman Catholic Church.

Individual cases, certainly. I've yet to see an instance of such cases not being dealt with swiftly and the offending individuals removed from any position of authority if not the church itself, once the offense became known. It's been alleged that repeat offenders just move on to another Protestant church and are able to do so, due to the lack of any overarching hierarchy. That claim might be plausible, but I've yet to see evidence of it.

Again, man is fallen and prone to sin, and some will fall prey to their particular weaknesses. But an entire denomination apparently dedicated to moving sexual predators around, publicly defending them and sending them off to another church instead of removing them and handing them over to civil authorities?

No. The Protestant world just does not work that way. Neither should the Catholic, as you're learning, painfully.

788 posted on 05/09/2010 6:02:52 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry
But an entire denomination apparently dedicated to moving sexual predators around, publicly defending them and sending them off to another church instead of removing them and handing them over to civil authorities?

No. The Protestant world just does not work that way. Neither should the Catholic, as you're learning, painfully.

Yep. Does it get anybody's attention WHY the data is MORE available about Catholics?

And to exaggerate, to say "an entire denomination" may be fun, but it leaves the truth far behind while ignoring that at the peak of this disaster psychiatrists, in their own self-satisfied way, were saying this behavior was largely treatable.

AND, while we are far to slow in cleaning this up, we ARE cleaning it up and with increasing openness. These days the allegation alone gets a priest out of his parish and into some kind of suspended situation.

It is worthy of note that until other data came out, the accusation was that celibate Catholic clergy were more prone to this atrocity than others.

As more data appeared and that contention was harder to maintain, our enemies turned without missing a beat to the concealment issue. And now you are overstating it "an entire denomination" while ignoring the implications that in all the world (okay, maybe Mormons are as organized) we are the only outfit with the capability of producing the required data.

I am hoping that more and more men of courage will be made bishop. I do think that there is a tendency to go with either efficient bureaucrats or ivory-tower types.

799 posted on 05/09/2010 7:12:38 AM PDT by Mad Dawg (O Maria, sine labe concepta, ora pro nobis qui ad te confugimus.)
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To: RegulatorCountry
Again, man is fallen and prone to sin, and some will fall prey to their particular weaknesses. But an entire denomination apparently dedicated to moving sexual predators around, publicly defending them and sending them off to another church instead of removing them and handing them over to civil authorities? No. The Protestant world just does not work that way. Neither should the Catholic, as you're learning, painfully.

Give a call to this church: Link and ask them how they handled the situation with Pastor "feel the ti*s" Ritt when he destroyed both his and the choir director's family by getting involved in an unseemly "intense" relationship with her some 30 or so years ago. The parishioners were "in flames" over this (they had meetings; I was there), but they kept Pastor Ritt in his post (forgive your brother! forgive your brother!), and many of the angry parishioners, who felt forgiveness was in order, but the pastor should step down, moved on to another church. (I left as well, but years later converted to Catholicism.) Did any of Pastor Ritt's "issues" get any press? Not much! The sleazy goings on in the Lutheran church just isn't news, as the Protestants dismissed the Living Body of Christ, which to the Catholics allows darkness (impurity) to fill in the gap, when they organized their faiths long ago. The Catholic Church will never do that (the source and summit of the Christian life), so when the devil hits their pews, it becomes bigger news.
805 posted on 05/09/2010 7:34:16 AM PDT by mlizzy ("Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person" --Mother Teresa.)
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