Yeah, Wilso. Next time have the manners not to criticise religion on threads designed to be critical of religion.
I'm not going to bed yet. It's Friday night. One of the few times I get to be on A2K when there's some people around.
Wilso wrote:I'm not going to bed yet. It's Friday night. One of the few times I get to be on A2K when there's some people around.
But Wilso, I am *always* here with you !! How cud ya ignore me
G, you count for a least ten people. :wink:
Gee Wilso, I can have an orgy with myself then
fick?le
Pronunciation: (fik'ul), [key]
?adj.
1. likely to change, esp. due to caprice, irresolution, or instability; casually changeable: fickle weather.
2. not constant or loyal in affections: a fickle lover.
Ahhhh - so which one these two definitions apply to me ???
Look at all the fun I missed while I was working, and sleeping.
Guess, G!
MORNING CAV!!!!!!!!!
I have grown increasingly disappointed in the leadership of the Catholic Church. I am a graduate of Catholic schools and as an adult worked with Catholic priests in the poorest parts of Texas trying to find ways of improving conditions for the families there.
Five or six years ago, when the first reports of child sexual abuse arose here in the states my older brother, a priest, and I had a long conversation at Thanksgiving. He was toeing the official line about how it was a miniscule number of priests who were accused and an even smaller number than that who actually committed any crimes. I replied that if that were true then the actions of the bishops might be seen as complicite in whatever crimes were committed unless they insisted that the priests guilty of those crimes turn themselves in to the police and throw themselves on the mercy of the courts. The bishops, I went on, ought to have ordered their priests to make immediate and complete admission of all wrongdoing to the civil authorities and then present themselves to an ecclisiasitic court. Render unto Caesar, what is Caesar's..... He demurred that it was more complex that that. I said "I bet that's what they said to Jesus just before he went into the temple with a whip of ropes to drive out the moneychangers and street vendors."
::::::
Well, nobody has taken up the whip of ropes here in the USA, instead we continue to hear in the courts the reports of moving abusive priests from parish to parish and how, it now turns out, that the lawyer in the Houston area who worked to defend the pedophiles of the Church was himself a victim of abuse by a priest when he was a child. (Talk about your Stockholm Syndrome.)
Many Catholics have risen up and called the bishops on their cowardice.
That's good, but I think the damage is irreversible. I haven't considered myself a Catholic for years (abortion rights, birth control, subjugation of women, anti-science stances, silence on the VietNam War, the list goes on.), and I think because of all this on top of the rest that that decision is irreversible as well.
At Thanksgiving this year my brother and I talked about how good the baked brie was while sitting next to me was the front page of the New York Times reporting that the Archdiocese of Boston was selling off properties including the Archbishop's residence in order to pay off the 80 million dollars in civil damages it owes.
80 million, a drop in the bucket for the Catholic church.
Good point there Wilso, and they accuse Jews of having all the money. Go figure.
You guys are cracking me up!
Quote:He was toeing the official line about how it was a miniscule number of priests who were accused and an even smaller number than that who actually committed any crimes.
Odd, that. It's generally acknowledged in other arenas of sexual abuse (such as, say, American universities) that the number of accusations leveled grossly underrepresents the number of crimes committed. Ah, well.
Its funny how some of the most vile things in human nature are closely related religion. I see more problems amongst the theists than any where else. It seems that religions provide a nice lupould for being a disgusting creature.
There are things about me that Im sure many theists would consider inmoral. Like the fact that I think people should be able to have sex with whoever they want to without any commitments if they so desire. But I would then point out that they lack the moral to care for our fellow man. If we dont agree then they shall burn. Right.....Wrong....No one is going to suffer any condemment just because they arnt following what might be the popular theology of the geographic region at that time......
Im sorry, loophole
n.
A way of escaping a difficulty, especially an omission or ambiguity in the wording of a contract or law that provides a means of evading compliance
