Posted on 01/10/2020 6:28:20 PM PST by marshmallow
Court ruling a major step toward holding dioceses accountable
PITTSBURGH (ChurchMilitant.com) - In a first-of-its-kind legal ruling, a Pennsylvania court has ruled that non-victims can move forward with lawsuits against the diocese of Pittsburgh.
Allegheny County Judge Christine A. Ward handed down the court ruling on Tuesday, accepting the plaintiffs' argument that they have standing to sue the Pittsburgh diocese.
The plaintiffs are claiming that the Pittsburgh diocese, along with seven over Pennsylvania dioceses, have created "a public nuisance" by failing to report every allegation of child abuse insofar as not doing so potentially endangers their children. Public nuisance refers to a legal offense in which the injury or damage is suffered by or affects the public at large rather than an individual.
Benjamin Sweet, lawyer for the plaintiffs, noted the decision "is the first time a cause of action has been brought by a non-survivor member of the public and the first time a court has said that is a viable legal strategy, that a private citizen can compel the Church to prove it's complying with the mandatory reporting law."
The court only ruled that the plaintiffs may move ahead with their suit against Pittsburgh; the seven other dioceses won on their argument that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue them.
(Excerpt) Read more at churchmilitant.com ...
Personally I'd like to sue the church just for having to read about its real world kiddy porn practically every single day - not just the luridness of it, but if you have any empathy at all you have to feel pain for these kids, and you have to be angry and confused by how they gaslight the world about it.
I return to this question all the time: What justifies the existence of, whatever else good it's doing, this portal for evil - 'The Church'?
(By ‘The Church’ I do mean specifically ‘The Catholic Institution/Organization’ ... not religion in general nor other Christian faiths. I’m talking about this version of Christianity expressed by this particular corrupted worldly organization (RICO in this case) of men and women.)
How about just being allowed to administer a thorough ass-kicking in a small room?
Can people sue the NEA and public schools system too?
Yeah and I would love to sue people who sue churches when they get outraged over sh!t that doesn’t involve them. The Portal to “The Stupidity in Sueing to Be Sueing Zone” opens wider.
I did say probably not great law. But the sentiment ... sue me if you want.
They will lose.
From a legal standpoint, I would probably come down on the side that there is not legal standing for those who didn't get diddled or weren't very closely touched, so to speak, by the diddling.
But in the court of life -> there is standing. I've got it and everyone who doesn't do this has got it.
I don't see how the world would be worse if this organization - this entity of men and women - disappeared. I'm not talking about the men and women who are innocent and count themselves as members, and I"m not declaring I'm right, but I am declaring that I don't see how I'm wrong, and would welcome hearing the reason why I'm wrong if you've got one.
I smell an entire cadre of lawyers...moving in for the kill.
The current False Pope and his evil accomplices have hideously corrupted the Church, probably worse than Alexander VI and the Borgia family. However, the Church played an invaluable role in preserving and saving Western Civilization, especially during the 16th and 17th centuries when it led Christendom in resisting Muslim conquest. Later, in the second half of the twentieth century, it led in the defeat of the Soviet Union. Sadly, the homosexuals and communists have, in the person of this vile, evil man, Bergoglio, utterly corrupted the Church and that evil must be totally cleansed from the Church so it can resume its historically divinely designated role.
A favored group in the Democratic Party donor class being handed economic opportunity always at the expense of others.
Good point about the NEA and local school system.
I say, “Go for it!”
And yet ... an organization that requires a great crisis like murdering totalitarians trying to take over the word ... i.e. an organization that requires proximity to evil, to appear good ... that is a problem in itself. In a way it's damning with faint praise, but also in fairness it is more than that. But again the problem is that it was, not is more than that.
The spirit that came forth in those days is not a product of the Catholic Church, but of men practicing sound principal and the word of God. It found its way into the world through the portal of the Church. Little good ever comes through that door in the past 40 years, usually demons. That's why I called it a 'portal for evil.'
When weak things go bad - no problem. When powerful things go bad ... sometimes it's time to discard them.
But I'm not arguing with you at all, just thinking out loud. Thanks for answering!
Using their logic if a factory owner was embezzling money from the pension fund I being a private citizen with no connection to the company could sue because it creates a negative image for the city I live in and hurts property values. There is a reason why courts have used a strict standing test for lawsuits.
BTW, I’m not speaking as a Catholic defending the Church. I’m a very much lapsed Protestant who does not attend any church and hasn’t since his parents ceased to be able to coerce him into doing it. However, I developed a tremendous respect and admiration for the RC Church during and because of the reigns of the late John Paul XXIII and Pope Benedict. The vile, evil Bergoglio has destroyed most of that.
I hear you, and I am definitely not taking issue with you or really anyone, I'm just observing what comes up for me - emotionally but very very much balanced by experience of the world and a rational thinking process, asking the question: Has the RC Church outlived whatever benefit it may have once channelled.
"However, I developed a tremendous respect and admiration for the RC Church during and because of the reigns of the late John Paul XXIII and Pope Benedict."
My devil's advocate position (lawyer devil's advocate, not religious) says this: "Yes those two were good men and probably even great men. But they were not the church itself, they merely temporarily served as its face, and in this case I would say as its mask. Beneath them and surrounding them was still this organization and it's not like the evil just appeared exactly when they left. Nope! It was simmering and couldn't wait for them to be gone.
The structure and organization I say, whatever spots of purity happen to be here or there, is soaked in an evil whose concentration far surpasses the mere ratios of concentrations of original sin present in mankind in general. Not only the concentration in each individual, including myself, but also original sin's nature as expressed in organizations of men (which is usually more potent and distilled whether good or bad -> which is why we favor tiny governments except when in a necessary war (like the Crusades))
And let's face it, the Cold Cultural War afoot across the globe now -> we KNOW which side the Church is on, otherwise they wouldn't tolerate the leader espousing global marxism.
Today the church is concentrated 'enemy of man' syrup - it comes down, 100% of the time these days, on side of the globalist tyrants. The diddling was going on in John and Benedicts time, surely the Marxism was too. The body of the church, if not its head, was badly corrupt then and headed in the current direction, which is why the body became strong enough to cut off its own head and replaced it with one that would more do its bidding. This is a carnal church, not a spiritual one.
Whether or not it's what the good men of the church once intended, it appears to me today to be rotted through and through, like a steel beam that is now 90% rather than 12% rusted. You replace it. Are you rejecting the steel? No. Steel is beautiful, but this beam is no longer steel. That there merely exist good mean and women who call themselves 'in the church,' and that in its name some legitimate good work is done is to me meaningless.
If the US becomes a communist state, and 50 years hence I say 'But I am still an American! I will support her for at her heart she is free' because of what it once was or occasionally is, what good am I to my fellow man? What is my 'good action' that isn't twice fold undone by my lending credence to what was once a vehicle of good, and lending those long gone good works and good-ness as an excuse to prop up what's now a vehicle for evil ... in part propped up by me? I should either be part of the revolution or go elsewhere. If I wait for the 'solution' then I am only prolonging the problem. And that is evil.
Not arguing against you ... just continuing to think out loud. I have my own experience, though not strictly or even mostly religious, in a questionable group with a strong historical line. Not an outright cult -> but a little culty-ish. When you're in it, only later looking back, having abandoned it and gone through the process of false self doubt and false guilt that accompanies it ... you see how back then you almost couldn't trust yourself with your own logic. It's the same phenomenon as people holding onto a stock that's going down and by all rational business and rational measures will continue down ... but you've lost so much, you lie to yourself that somehow the great evil is part of a great epic story that ends in good. That the eventual good is so good it justifies the current evil. What a great story!
I think not so with this story, and many people are riding this bird through hell with the idea that there is some mysterious sunshine that they can't see, maybe because they are just not worthy yet. They will die on that birds back one day, the bird never having left, nor ever to leave, flying through hell. And they will say 'I should have trusted what I knew, rather than what a man in a costume told me I should know.'
The Catholic Church is not and never was God Himself. There was God before and there will be God after it. There will also be paths to God after it.
Who believes that the path to God must come from another man or organization of them, good or corrupt, much less a specific man or organization?
When you climb Mt. Washington, there is a sign half a mile from the peak. It says 'Peak this way!.' When it comes to God, most men cling to the sign, afraid to leave it, for fear they won't attain the peak. Further, when that wooden sign is left unmaintained, it rots in the weather - that is its original sinful nature - and when it rots and bends and folds and half collapses and no longer points to the peak ... still it's surrounded by multitudes of hikers not only now clinging to it, but no longer does it even point at the peak, so that if ever they realize there is still a half mile, they are unlikely to walk in the direction of the peak.
As a result, they will never attain the peak. That is evil. No sign would be better in that case.
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