Fuck the Evil Catholic Church

[YoUDeeMan]

(SYDNEY) — Seven percent of priests in Australia's Catholic Church were accused of sexually abusing children over the past several decades, a lawyer said Monday as officials investigating institutional abuse across Australia revealed for the first time the extent of the crisis.

The average age of the victims was 10.5 for girls and 11.5 for boys.

Damn, I guess boys do mature later than girls.

[GannonFan]

What a timely bump, Joe.



http://time.com/4660927/catholic-priest ... ual-abuse/

Again, there isn't any doubt a number of priests engaged in predatory conduct. I doubt the figure of 7% is accurate, though. Numerous studies suggest that the percentage of predatory priests is not greater than the percentage of the population as a whole. The article says 7% were "accused" but that doesn't mean 7% actually engaged in such acts. What is becoming clear is that the number of accusations against priests are becoming inflated due to belief that an accusation will result in a legal settlement. See my link above for the reasons why, i.e., a cottage industry has been created.

I don't doubt that there are dubious claims, nor that there are lawyers sensing a payday and advancing claims that don't have merit. Of course there's going to be some bad actors when there's so much money at stake.

However, and speaking as a Catholic here, I think you're underselling the tragedy that this has been. Sure, possibly the rate of child abuse by priests inside the Catholic Church isn't much different than the rate of child abuse anywhere else (tons of examples, practically any place there are adults in close proximity to children - the US swim team, for example, apparently teachers in Texas - just saw an article on that). But that's nothing to be proud of, saying that priests just abuse children at the same rate, or close to it, than anywhere else. We should expect and demand better than that for a religious organization, especially our own. And that leads into the other dark an murky area, the obvious attempts to keep all these abuses quiet and under the radar, for both financial as well as personal reasons. The Church is clearly not alone when it comes to having to deal with child sex abuse, although again we should hope for better than average, but it almost stands alone from a singular standpoint when it came and still comes to either covering up what went on, including their inability to stop the abuses from happening, as well as trying to avoid a responsibility, especially a moral one, from having these abuses happen with the Church as the conduit for it to happen. Clean up and continue to clean up how the Church deals with and responds to evils when they happen as well as preventing the next ones from happening, and the issue of predatory lawyers looking to make a payday goes away as a potential problem.

[Grizalltheway]

Again, there isn't any doubt a number of priests engaged in predatory conduct. I doubt the figure of 7% is accurate, though. Numerous studies suggest that the percentage of predatory priests is not greater than the percentage of the population as a whole. The article says 7% were "accused" but that doesn't mean 7% actually engaged in such acts. What is becoming clear is that the number of accusations against priests are becoming inflated due to belief that an accusation will result in a legal settlement. See my link above for the reasons why, i.e., a cottage industry has been created.

I don't doubt that there are dubious claims, nor that there are lawyers sensing a payday and advancing claims that don't have merit. Of course there's going to be some bad actors when there's so much money at stake.

However, and speaking as a Catholic here, I think you're underselling the tragedy that this has been. Sure, possibly the rate of child abuse by priests inside the Catholic Church isn't much different than the rate of child abuse anywhere else (tons of examples, practically any place there are adults in close proximity to children - the US swim team, for example, apparently teachers in Texas - just saw an article on that). But that's nothing to be proud of, saying that priests just abuse children at the same rate, or close to it, than anywhere else. We should expect and demand better than that for a religious organization, especially our own. And that leads into the other dark an murky area, the obvious attempts to keep all these abuses quiet and under the radar, for both financial as well as personal reasons. The Church is clearly not alone when it comes to having to deal with child sex abuse, although again we should hope for better than average, but it almost stands alone from a singular standpoint when it came and still comes to either covering up what went on, including their inability to stop the abuses from happening, as well as trying to avoid a responsibility, especially a moral one, from having these abuses happen with the Church as the conduit for it to happen. Clean up and continue to clean up how the Church deals with and responds to evils when they happen as well as preventing the next ones from happening, and the issue of predatory lawyers looking to make a payday goes away as a potential problem.

Well said Ganny.

[Pwns]

I don't think JJ is "proud" of it, just taking down the contention that there's an actual epidemic of abuse in the church, which the D1Bs and even the media have advanced.

[GannonFan]

I don't think JJ is "proud" of it, just taking down the contention that there's an actual epidemic of abuse in the church, which the D1Bs and even the media have advanced.

I agree with JJ that there's probably not that many more abusers in the Church than there were/are in other walks of life. It's obviously just the perniciousness of the coverups, the denials, and the perpetuation of the abuses by not immediately taking the abusers out of places where they could continue to abuse that's the tragedy in all of this.

[89Hen]

Clean up and continue to clean up how the Church deals with and responds to evils when they happen as well as preventing the next ones from happening, and the issue of predatory lawyers looking to make a payday goes away as a potential problem.

The good news is that this is happening, at least around here. If you volunteer even to help at lunch in a Catholic school, you have to pass background checks and take classes on misconduct.