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Religion IS crazy!

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But the majority view in Oz is that the organised religions should be treated with scepticism ... I don't know anyone who admits to believing the codified doctrines, but I'd wager many people keep the door open to some all powerful being that might just be there for reward and punishment.

The King James bible has several editions and the Catholic bible has an apocrypha tacked on the back of it to give a moralistic dimension to the religion. No doubt the Koran has gone through some fairly serious mods to accommodate prevailing sentiments over history too. It would be implausible for even an imbecile to think the whole thing is 100% God's own digest.
 
Who says religion is all bad ?

 
bunyip said:
Religions are primarily made up of people.
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Not one of your sharpest openings Bunyip, but in your own special way you have opened the door to my argument.

I can separate the Catholic Church from individual people. I don't believe you can. I am not saying that the abuse that happened was right - it was appalling, but these are rogue individuals who make up a small percentage of the Priests, Sisters and Brothers serving in the Church. The Catholic Church is no more condoning the actions of these people than the Australian Defence Force who paid off and intimidated young cadets who complain of sexual abuse by higher ranking officers.

It amazes me to think that non-Catholics can have more behavioural expectations of Priests than Catholics actually do!!!

Duckman
 
Duckman, I do think your above post is disingenous. If we accept that the abuse occurred via a relatively small number of individuals, there is now no question that it was systematically covered up over a very long period of time by the Catholic Church as an institution.
That is where your argument completely falls over.

Even when it was all reluctantly brought into the open the Church sought to minimise the damage to itself at the expense of the victims. I cannot think of any actions more damaging to the institution than that.
 

Julia, so was the abuse within the Australian Defence Force, but that doesn't mean the organization was rotten to the bone. Nor does it mean there wasn't extraordinary people doing their best for their country within that organization. Nor do I think their core value as stated by the army...."Courage, moral and physical, to act in the best interest of the Nation and the army" was negated by the disgusting actions of perpetrators and the self preserving actions of cowardly leaders.

As for the response by the Church, of course it wasn't adequate and they've admitted they made mistakes fighting victims. But what is fair when it comes to compensation? Is being molested by a priest worth more than being molested by a family friend, scout leader, teacher or sibling?

Duckman
 
Duckman I am reacting to what you have written.
I do not at all agree with you equating abuse in the ADF (or other parties) with the abuse by clergy.
Clergy are abusing children. Children that are completely powerless to defend themselves.
They are being abused by figures that are held up to be mentors and spiritual gaurdians, figures that ask us to see them as the pariahs of the community, trustworthy and beyond reproach. Parents handover the care and education to them, or the care and guidance is or was provided in institutions where the parents are off the scene - the latter children even more vulnerable. This complete and appalling betrayal of trust causes lifelong and life shortening psychological damage.......and this is what the church has covered up, minimised, deflected in many ways including shuttling the rapists away for scrutiny, not involving police, allowing them to continue their deeds elsewhere...etc etc etc

The church is an institution based on so many moral pillars- now so very degraded by how it has responded to its own failure to act according to its own tenets.

I do not wish to downplay the abuse in the ADF...but it is not useful to equate it to the above. It is a little like a straw man being set up.
 

I don't disagree with these comments Lindsay, except I don't believe the clergy would like to think of themselves as pariahs. Lovely Freudian slip). I am not arguing with you regarding the complete betrayal of trust. However I do have a problem with the way you seem to apportion a much greater degree of severity and mental torture on abuse by the clergy. Your statement above would be just as relevant if you replaced the word clergy with scout leader, school teacher, father, mother, swim coach. As parents we place trust and reliance on large numbers of people in the community to do the right thing - call me naïve but I don't expect ANYONE in the community to indecently deal with my children.

You tell me who in the eyes of a 7 year child has created the greater betrayal - the mother who turns her blind eye to a partner sexually molesting her daughter or the local priest.

Look we all have our opinions - some on this forum such as Julia and Bunyip see things in black and white, right or wrong, wet and dry. I don't see it that way. I am not supporting the Church in the stance it has taken over the years and agree with many of the deserved criticisms that Julia and Bunyip have expressed.

Duckman
 
I can't for the life of me see any connection between the subject of this thread, Religion, and criminal acts by members of an institution/ company/ body corporate.
When we talk about Religion, we refer to the belief system, the essence of teaching; we may then include the underlying evolutionary/ historic/ psychological basis for such beliefs, and mental and behavioral implications on its subjects.
Clergy who abuse altar boys, teachers who maim children's body and spirit, officers who brutalise cadets, and bishops/ headmasters/ generals who condone and cover up such disgraceful acts, are not doing so for religious reasons, but as administrators and managers of an institution. In that regard, abuse for which "the Church" or "the School" or "the Military" may be blamed, has got nothing to do with the ideology behind those institutions, but everything to do with perversion of some of their members. Their transgressions are exacerbated after the fact by a hierarchy that tries to minimise any damage to the institution by covering it up and sweeping complaints under the carpet.
 
Your statement above would be just as relevant if you replaced the word clergy with scout leader, school teacher, father, mother, swim coach.
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Actually I believe that abuse in the defence force, especially when committed by a senior officer on a more junior person, is also a serious offence, because there is a power relationship between the offender and the victim, similar to that between parent and child. Balanced against this this the fact that the victims are adults, but still such acts are abuses of power for which the offenders seem to have suffered little punishment.
 

Hey Duckman,

I'll join my voice with lindsayf and say that I don't like what you've done there in comparing ADF and Catholic Church. I'd encourage you to think about how the victims in each of these cases would feel about your statements.

The vast majority of cases of the church involved young children. The vast majority of cases of the ADF did not. Sure, both organizations acted to "protect" the organisation and trampled the victims, but if that is the similarity you are drawing between them you haven't made that clear...and I don't see the point of making that comparison. The actions of one do not excuse the other.

Can you see why the offences of one are an order of magnitude greater than the other? While both are heinous crimes, the offences against mostly children make the church's actions "more offensive" in my view and this extends into the cover-up.

I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve with your posts, but they taste very apologist simply because one happens to be a religious organization.

Cheers

Sir O
 
I probably don't need to say that I'm 100% with the remarks of lindsayf and Sir O.

To compare the relative lack of power on the part of a junior ADULT in Defence, an organisation known for toughness, with a little kid of as young as five or six in many cases, in the institutions charged with protecting them in every way is an utter distortion of the awful impact of the pain, confusion and terror experienced by so many victims of the churches.

The comparison is about as appropriate as Cardinal Pell's suggestion that the situation in the church was no different from a trucking company being held responsible if one of their drivers should happen to molest a young woman.

And yes, Duckman, I sure as hell do see the situation in black and white. Shades of grey throughout much of life but imo not a single one when it comes to the physical, moral, emotional and sexual assault of a defenceless child.
 

I certainly agree with your views regarding the responsibility of churches. That responsibility is now being exposed very publicly by a Royal Commission as it should be. On the other hand, abuse in the Defence Forces seems to be being hushed up.

The Royal Commission is enquiring into the response of institutions into sexual abuse of children. The Armed forces are institutions and if they cannot be enquired into by the current RC, I see no reason why another Commission should not be held into their response to abuse within their ranks. Or are our governments afraid of the outcome ?

It's worth mentioning that enquiries held by the defence forces themselves into abuse may well be presided over by abusers. Andrew Wilke said that he was involved in such incidents both as a victim and a perpetrator and seems to have laughed it off with the excuse that it's a part of life in the Defence Force. Should it be ?
 
Where are the parents in all of this? My mother would never have left me alone with any male adult, let alone a priest..... the rumours were strong then as they are now and probably for centuries prior.

I can't imagine the dilemma of a child being told by his parents to behave for the priest and that priest firstly describing and then perpetrating that behavioural filth. To me it's a betrayal from all the adult guardians.
 

Fair point, but what about the kids in orphanages run by the churches ?
 
Rumpole has correctly pointed out that much of the worst abuse occurred in orphanages. This, of course, made it all the more heinous: these little kids had absolutely no one to care about them, or to advocate on their behalf.
Some of them had the courage to run away, appeal to the police, who promptly returned them to their abusers.
Their attempt brought a further beating. One child was then locked in a cage, badly beaten, for many days.

The picture I'll never dispel from my mind is from the testimony of one then very young boy who had been repeatedly raped, left bleeding each time, who actually had bricks tied to his feet before he was thrown into a swimming pool. What sort of depraved mind could possibly do that? And from the shepherds of God who purport to provide the origin of what a proper moral compass should be. That Christianity is the basis of the very ethics to which decent people should adhere.
What breathtaking hypocrisy!

But that aside, you're quite right. Where indeed were the thoughts of the parents? I'd suggest they were entirely absorbed in the complete trust they had in priests whom they'd been indoctrinated to believe were god's representatives and that any notion they were capable of evil would simply never have entered their heads.
 
to those seeking to equate clergy abuse with abuse by other parties;

Of course any sexual, emotional, psychological, physical abuse (you cant have the first without the next 2 and probably the third) that occurs between one powerful figure and one vulnerable figure is abhorrent and the results devastating.
But this ignores the additional layers of abuse and impact that occur when clergy is the perpetrator and the church engaged in the covering up.
The things that set the clergy abuse apart is the role they have in society. They are by virtue ( sad to use that word here) of thier (clerical) role in community and society, seen to be moral and spiritual guides, supporters of the vulnerable and the downtrodden and trustworthy beyond question. In this capacity they are able to easily groom and abuse in a way that betrays not only the child, but the family and the community at large. If the child speaks out they will ( at least historically) be met with denials at least ( and threat and intimidation as followups from the abuser) because it is too outrageous to be true and too difficult to face. As the truth comes out then the family members that were unable to protect/did not believe their children are faced with the horror and guilt of the disgusting betrayal that has occurred almost under their noses.

The part religion plays here is that it wrongly and effectively provided the individual with a cloak of respectability - and this enables the abuse in a way that it could not have otherwise. Another way that religion enables this is that due to a distorted moral framework courtesy of the silly text book they use, the abuse has been able to rationalised, justified and repented for-so now they can carry on. Another part ( and I know this is controversial to some) is the stupid culture of sexual repression such as in the catholic clerical system. There is little hope that an individual will develop healthily emotionally, psychologically or sexually as a cleric within this system. I have no evidence to suggest causation here (and there are no doubt other factors at play) but I suggest there is a correlation between the incidence of child abuse and the culture of sexual repression that young clerics must exist in with unlimited access to, and power over, the flock.
 

It's interesting that the abuses that we know of seem to be mainly by the Catholic church.

What of CofE, Uniting, Baptists, Congregationalists etc ?. Answer; these allow priests to be married.

There is no guarantee that similar abuse hasn't gone on in these churches, but if it had to a large degree you would think the complaints would have come out by now.
 
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