"Jim I fail to see why you insist on condemnation an entire church because of some horrible personal experiences and the publicised failings of a MINORITY."
Iains
I fail to see why you tke a minute part of muy argument and totally ignore that the behaviour of the hierarchy of the church brought the whole position of the church to the verge of ruin
The rape of children were down to individuals - the ignoring, covering up and even facilitating those reps over decades (at least) was down to the hierarchy
The MMAGDALENE LAUNDRIES , where "fallen women" were incarcerated, humiliated, beaten and, if their condition led tem to giving birth, had their babie taken from them and sold to wealthy buyers, ran from the 18th century to the end of the 20th, the last one closed on 1096
The INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS beat, humilated and sexually abused boys from the first half of the nineteenth to the late twentieth century
How can you possibly put this dwn to some horrible personal experiences and the publicised failings of a MINORITY.
COME ON - you are not even trying.
Unless you are passing this off as "false news" how can you - how can anybody possibly defend it or minimise it?
Do you think these accounts are fake?
"but I have also seen many church leaders who have done remarkably good things."
Immaterial Joe - I believe Goebbels loved cats
Goodness does not absolve badness
" I wonder how the Catholic Church was supposed to be able to regulate this guy's stupidity."
You are not responding to the point I have already made - "it wasn't this guy's stupidity" that was the problem - it was the power he weilded to enable him to inflict that cruelty - it was also the state of minds of the victims that allowed that cruelty to be inflicted without striking back in some way
These guys were as powerful as AL Capone - that was still obvious right up
to the point when we moved here in !998 among older people
That is going gradually - appeasing those ways stands to slow down that departure.
Your church really is crumbling - I don't want that to happen - not this way.
I would be delighted to see all religions taught as philosophies alongside political and cultural philosophies and measured against one another rather than taught as individual dogmas which set people against one another.
Institutions are neutral - doesn't that depend on whose in charge?
That's like saying all western governments are democratic
Jim Carroll