Pastor held for sexually exploiting minor girls

India Today ^ | 19 Jun 2011 | Aravind Gowda

[ansel12]

Man, what have I done to set you off, what is all this personal attack, and baggage, and cross thread stuff about?

I made a reasonable post on this thread, I did not think that I was stepping into some kind of angry alligator swamp.

[ravager]

Not just Islam but any religion. It maybe fine with you but yes it is still hypocritical. Besides problems don't go away just by brushing them under the carpet.

[Cronos]

To be fair it's not you. I'm just sick of various non-Catholics not noticing the day-in and day-out attacks on my faith. For the past couple of days a poster (who I've linked you to) has been posting these same threads over and over again. In fact that's all she posts.

Not one protested this obsession.

Then I posted some to show that we all face these problems and I saw your post

[ansel12]

Personally I am OK with Christians attacking Islam and Scientology, on a conservative American forum.

[ansel12]

I guess you see the difference between revealing the warts within a specific organization that people can influence to impose changes on it’s global leadership cadre and policies, versus just finding and trumpeting every wart on the globe that we can attach the label Christian to.

[ravager]

My post was not about Islam or Scientology. I never mentioned any of those. It was about hypocrisy. Read again.

[ansel12]

Yeah, I don’t understand why it is hypocritical for Christians to knock Islam, why do you think that it is.

[Cronos]

But this is not a “specific organization” — this is my faith. The “revealing the warts” is fine if one guy posts once, but an obsession? No, that is an attack on Christian beliefs

[Cronos]

There isn’t really a difference if one uses the criminals to paint all members of the religious block in the same light. I don’t like it when this pastor is considered as representative of all of us Christians, nor do I like it when folks use the criminal priests from the 70s to pain a sub-set of Christians - Catholics in the same way

[Natural Law]

"I guess you see the difference between revealing the warts within a specific organization that people can influence to impose changes on it’s global leadership cadre and policies, versus just finding and trumpeting every wart on the globe that we can attach the label Christian to."

So you would want us to believe that the only "specific" organization that people can influence is the one you don't belong to? Does that mean that you consider scrutiny of non-Catholic organizations and their clergy, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of abuse, to be a wasted effort?

[ansel12]

The administration of the church is not your faith, and I have no idea about how many times people post, or are supposed to post about decades long, at least partly avoidable, issues, that affect children in this nation and globally so much and so tragically.

When a problem can be stopped by turning up the publicity heat, maybe people feel driven to try. Maybe some are just venting at what they see as institutional indifference, or worst.

I don’t get involved in that stuff much, if at all.

[ansel12]

I don’t belong to a church.

[Cronos]

Look -- I would have no issue if this is just talking about administration, but the standard line used by the posters I linked you to is to use these criminals as proof that my faith is wrong. It's as you said, wrong to use this criminal pastor to paint all us Christians and our Christian faith as wrong.

Similarly, it is wrong for some to use some criminal priests to paint us Christian-Catholics and our Christian-Catholic faith as wrong.

[ansel12]

I wouldn’t know, I have rarely seen any of those threads.

I noticed this one because it was about India.

[MrEdd]

Posts on this topic are not an attack on Christian beliefs, unless the grounds for the article are obviously spurious.

Children are a gift from God.

They are precious little ones.

The parables about stewardship apply to the church, in care for those not yet mature.

Children are not chattel, for the lusts of adults. These things need to be stopped cold when they happen, and those who were hurt need to be made whole - by the Church freely, good heartedly, in recognition of the admonitions and desires of God, not because some court finally made us.

I post on most threads that appear about rape and sexual abuse.

If the Perpetrator is a cop, there are people who show up saying people only care because it was law enforcement.

If it is a teacher, there will be people who say it would be no big deal if it weren't a teacher.

If it is religion or denomination X then people of that persuasion show up whining that they are singled out.

Frankly, I don't care who it was, I want it exposed to the light rather than hidden away, and I want anyone who attempted to sweep it away brought into the light as well.

I want it to stop.

We live in a fallen world, and maybe what I wish won't come to pass in this age. None the less I shall strive for it.

[Cronos]

"Posts on this topic are not an attack on Christian beliefs, unless the grounds for the article are obviously spurious."

It is if folks obsessively post only this...

[King Moonracer]

Obsessive, what did the Mormons do wrong now???

[MrEdd]

Spuriousness of an event is not determined by frequency, It is determined by whether or not it really happened, or whether the evidence at hand makes it reasonable to impute that it happened,

[Cronos]

whichever way, it is incorrect to use it to attack the doctrines of Christianity due to the failures of some pastors

[Cronos]

They let Marie Osmond get chubby. Man, I remember her in the 80s when I was a kid — she was cute...