First thought: Why does the government have to “ask”?
After reading the article:
From that report, he said it was concluded that some 440,000 adults may have suffered sex abuse in Spain by people linked to the church and that roughly half of those cases were committed by clergy.
Holy shit.
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This may be a novel idea, but why don’t they compensate the victims of centuries of abuse by dissolving the church entirely and give all the proceeds to charity? eh? Oh wait, I forgot that the imaginary daddy in the sky might disapprove of me.
It’s almost like it was a stupid idea to attempt to oppress a bunch of animals from expressing sexuality that’s built in their DNA. Who could have guessed that would result in fucked up consequences? Then, when you actively hide the deviant actions, who could have guessed the position would attract further deviants to it? Seriously, the church couldn’t have done things more devoid of reason if they tried.
There’s also the historical issue where gay people were sent to the church to “hide” the fact that they were gay. Basically, if you were of marrying age and hadn’t taken a bride, people would begin to ask questions.
Sure, at first you can handwave it away. But eventually, your neighbors get suspicious. After all, this is a time when virtually everyone pairs off and gets married. If you aren’t married, it’s either because something is wrong with you, or you’re choosing not to take a bride. And in an age where being gay would turn you into an exile (at best) or just straight up get you killed, you definitely didn’t want the neighbors to get suspicious. There’s also the shame it may bring to your family if you’re outed as gay.
So instead, the church offers a nice shiny excuse for why you haven’t taken a bride. You’re joining the clergy, and becoming a man of God. No more questions asked about your lack of a wife. But this meant that the church was bursting at the seams with a bunch of sexually repressed gay people. They definitely couldn’t talk to each other about it, because (again) that’d get you stoned to death. So instead, you have a bunch of priests taking their frustrations out on the helpless altar boys under their care.
And when that altar boy eventually speaks out about the abuse, your higher ups have a vested interest in covering it up. Because they’re gay and sexually repressed too, and also likely abused (or were culpable in the abuse of) altar boys in the past. And so your higher ups will just continue stacking that house of cards higher and higher, to try and avoid any suspicion landing on themselves when the people they abused come forward.
This isn’t to play into the “gays=perverts” talking point that right wing media loves to parrot. But it is an important bit of context into why so many priests ended up being abusers. They were basically a bunch of horny gay guys who had constantly been told that their feelings were shameful and they should repent for them. So they buried those feelings until they festered, and then they ended up acting out on the nearest helpless victims they found.
This isn’t to play into the “gays=perverts” talking point that right wing media loves to parrot.
I mean… it kind of is?
Gay men are not attracted to children, they are attracted to other men. Even if they’re closeted.
Pedophiles are attracted to children.
So you think that if you put a bunch of gay men in an environment where they can’t have sex then they’ll turn to sexually abusing children?
I think you missed the point of my last paragraph. It’s not about whether or not they’re gay. You sexually repress anyone hard enough, and they’ll start acting out in immoral ways. After all, if you’ve always been told that your natural feelings are immoral, then why not act immorally in other ways too? I’m sure there was also a lot of self-hatred too, in the same way that some of the loudest bigots are closeted. The kids weren’t abused because they were boys; They were abused because they were convenient targets who could be easily silenced.
Yes, but you prefaced that with a long story about why there were so many gay men as priests. If it had nothing to do with gay men, just people in general, why did you think it was relevant to say there were a ton of gay priests?
Because the gay men were part of the church specifically because they were gay, and were sexually repressed by the very same institution.
The point is that it doesn’t matter if they were gay. Straight priests were also sexually repressed by the church. It’s the sexual repression that matters, not the sexual identity of the person. But you led up to your conclusion with a big story about gay people, which implies that gay people were somehow more inclined to acting out on repression than straight people.
Fucking good. Now do that in every other country in the world.
They should make the individuals pay, not the church. The church’s money comes from donations made by Catholics who attend the church. As someone who was baptized Catholic and attended Catholic Church, I was never abused by priests or nuns. Did the Catholic Churches ever ask the Baptist churches to pay them for damages when members of the KKK attacked Catholic families around the time of the civil rights movement? Probably not. It was individuals who committed those crimes. Should the Baptist churches have paid for damages each time a Catholic family found a cross burning on their lawn, around the 50’s and 60’s?
The Catholic Church is being punished for its covering up of the abuse and moving priests around to give then fresh new hunting grounds when allegations were made in their old parish. It’s a systemic issue being punished at a systemic level.
You don’t actually just get to pay a little fine if you fuck a child.
Oh and ‘Church asked to pay’ is only in the headline because a very similar case happened in Ireland and a rogue minister on his last day agreed to have the government pay the fine which is the alternative- everyone, Catholic or not, asked to pay the fine.
I don’t deny they covered it up, but I just think the guilty individuals should pay.
I assume they would do jail time and then pay for damages to the child and the family of the child. Then again, I don’t know much about repercussions of those types of crimes. I tend to date older men, and didn’t major in law.
Ireland operates differently than other countries.
The whole point is that instead of turning over priests who committed crimes to the police where those individuals would do jail time, per your request, the Catholic Church actively worked to prevent those crimes being told to police, actively worked to move priests to a new parish where they could CONTINUE committing crimes, and actively worked to discredit the victims. Those things are not the act of an individual.
Yes, the individuals should do jail time, but the organization that actively aided the crimes should pay reparations.
The church is a guilty institution, it provided abusers with authority and power over their victims, and actively covered up crimes and enabled abusers to continue committing crimes. While demanding money and devotion from it’s millions of followers, many of whom were the victims. Abusers should be punished for their crimes, but we’re talking historic abuse, most perpetrators are probably dead. The church should most definitely pay reparations.
Considering the curch helps cover it up, they too are responsible.
When I think of the Catholic Church, I consider the people that make the church what it is, not just the people at the top. A lot of Catholics spoke out about the abuse. One that stands out for sure was Sinead O’Connor. People forget she was Catholic. She was outraged and drew much attention to the issue. So did many other Catholics. I don’t consider the abusers of the church to be Catholic. Good Catholics shouldn’t have turned their backs on the church when that all unfolded; they are what makes the church a church and it needed good people to remain and be outspoken. I think church leaders tried to do damage control and it became a big cover up, which shouldn’t have happened.
Sinead O’Connor was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for trying to become a priest, so no, she wasn’t Catholic. She died a Muslim, and probably would have preferred we called her Shuhada.
In reality she stopped being Catholic long before she ripped up a picture of the Pope. For more than 25 years she was Catholic only in a definition that would also include me - having been baptised as one. You seem to think lay Catholics have influence on the Church. They do not. Only in the form of donations, which practicing Catholics have never withheld. So I’m perfectly fine with the Church using those donations. Where else is it going to get money? Selling priceless artifacts?
One that stands out for sure was Sinead O’Connor. People forget she was Catholic. She was outraged and drew much attention to the issue.
And how did both the Catholic Church and nearly every Catholic person (not just the people at the top) around the world react to that?
