Before you dismiss this as dubious because it came from the New York Daily News, remember that unsubstantiated accusations against the Catholic Church are dangerous, as they have fancy lawyers, and the story has also been reported by other sources (e.g., Gawker). And this time the Church’s naked venality exposes it for the horrid and insensitive institution it is.
According to both articles, the Church has spent over $2 million dollars hiring lobbyists to fight the passage of the Child Victims Act, which would make it easier for victims of sexual child abuse to get justice from their predators. Among other things, that Act would open a one-year window for people older than 23 to file charges against sexual abusers—something that they can’t do now.
Why on Earth would the Church lobby against an act that protects the victims for which it now shows contrition? Yep, you guessed it:
Gawker:
State records show that the [New York Catholic conference], a group representing the bishops of the state’s eight dioceses, retained lobbyists to work on a number of issues associated with “statute of limitations” and “timelines for commencing certain civil actions related to sex offenses.”
“We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church,” Catholic Conference spokesman Dennis Poust told the New York Times in 2009.
“We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church”.
Is there any better way to acknowledge the fact that the victims of paedophile catholic priests are countless ?
Correct. In fact, the behavior of the Church would be the root cause of their bankruptcy, not the laws protecting children.
“We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church”
Or in a different context: “We believe this prison has been designed to prevent convicted murderers from using public transport.”
If only they could be ACTUALLY bankrupt as well as MORALLY…
One of the mysterious ways of Faith.
So..go ahead and bankrupt the Catholic Church!
It is well past time! Their policy of not letting priests marry in order to keep priest’s “wealth” within the church coffers is directly responsible for pedophile priests. When made aware of the massive problem, they covered it up. There should be no statute of limitations preventing abused individuals from legally confronting their abusers and, potentially, receiving compensation (which will never be enough to give them back their innocence) or still the nightmares.
Just this one thing. Catholic priests in the Eastern Rite are allowed to marry if they do so prior to ordination. As the Eastern Orthodox priests outside of communion with Rome do.
Another thing. I am not sure how you can say that keeping priests from being married results in pedophile priests. I am sure we can all agree that it is in the Catholic Church’s best interest they do not marry to spare the church potential costs that would be involved.
I am a former christian who at the last stages of my faith a near convert to Eastern Orthodoxy and my last stint as a christian was as a Catholic before ditching the entire faith idea and now am free. Free now.
I am free mostly due to Dr. Coyne at the end stage. It took a very long time to get here but I am here now. I really feel that we need to be clear about what we say.
While it may not be quite as simple as that power makes abusers (e.g. rape) according to some research, pedophilia isn’t within the normal sexual spectrum. It is therefore unlikely that abstinence would make for pedophilia, and indeed I hear the percentage of pedophiliacs within that sect is the normal rate.
The problem is fully the moral one. The sect aided and abetted sex crimes and sex criminals. And they ask all their victims for protection money against an imagined crime that will eventually mean an imagined endless torture if they don’t pay.
They are a de facto mafia. And then has the astounding manner to continue to pretend they have some higher moral ground.
With “normal” I mean usual average.
Nothing is normal about that behavior…
I would not be surprised that the average Catholic that financially supports the church does so with the thought that they are supporting a family. A family of like wise thinkers.
They graduate from Notre Dame and they have life long relationships that help them in life.
It does make me wonder how they can live with this.
Bill Donohue met these issues head-on (not!) on his website:
http://www.catholicleague.org/daily-news-spins-nys-abuse-bill/
I don’t know how anyone can remain a member of an organisation in good conscience that has for years shielded the paedophiles in its ranks. Every penny they give the Church is aiding and abetting the abuse of children.
Not to sound simplistic, but it really is a fear-based membership for every Catholic I’ve ever carefully questioned.
Sadly, frustratingly, that very fear is difficult to get on the list of bad things those Catholics already agree is sinister within their cult.
This fear has been acknowledged by some of the most intelligent, accomplished, and for lack of a better word, “stable,” people I’ve known.
Fear of leaving, and being wrong, overshadows everything.
Mike
Not to mention sunk costs, which seems to be true of many of the “good” clergy. They would have been social workers or something if the world had been better set up, but now …
Sunk cost fallacy indeed; an integral part.
Thanks,
Mike
You’re right about that. It’s why I save most of my attacks for the organisations and belief systems concerned rather than the people who follow them. I see the fear instilled in followers as one of the greatest evils of religions.
Amongst other atheists who are ex-theists, you can often tell which religion they came from by their reaction to certain things.
Very interesting!
Mike
I had more fear being strong enough as a child to stand up to the JW cult than leaving the Catholic Church. Everyone I see there when I must attend things for my child still welcomes me and treats me as if I never left.
As the saying goes, YMMV.
Nothing would please those Catholics smiling cordially to you during your child’s events than seeing the “prodigal child” return. It would make THEM happy, and we mustn’t forget that’s what it’s all about. 🙂
Good luck!
Mike
Hello Mike!
I agree that the Catholics smile and wave, hoping I will come back.
The difference is, they are not shunning me for not going to mass, They are not preventing me from speaking to my family. They have not formally excommunicated me. I did that myself.
They don’t stop at my house pretending they want to see how I am doing so they can assess if I have contraband books or materials in my home. They don’t care to spy on me. Or guilt me into coming back.
I had enough of that in the JW cult. They would pop over if you missed a single meeting. They made a point of calling you incessantly until you picked up the phone. For those of you who did not grow up in a cell phone era pre- caller ID, this meant having to ignore the phone constantly ringing and ringing and ringing. And you had to pick it up, you had no idea who was calling.
“they are not shunning me for not going to mass,”
Yeah, well, how’s that working for them? 😉
The organizations that have a severe penalty for leaving seem to do better holding on to members.
A person already had to engage in massive cognitive dissonance reduction to be Catholic long before the pedophilia problem became well-known, so what’s one more thing?
Yeah, good point. And there’s a whole lot more they’re engaging in constant cognitive dissonance over besides this.
Oh G8D, thank you for the poor so we can assist in furthering their destitute existence and we can fiddle about with them… thank you for not existing so we can carry on with our oh so worldly ways in the high offices of the land and behind the bell tower, keep the cash coming G8D, the unholy are growing in numbers and not laying down.
Open-bar night at the Knights of Columbus, Catholic Youth Organization football leagues, bingo, the annual carnival and raffle, hell, some folk even enjoy doing maintenance on the rectory or covenant — these are the coalface where Catholicism American-style is practiced.
My guestimate is that there aren’t two in ten Catholics in it for doctrinal reasons. Fewer still among those of reproductive age who abide the Church’s dictates on birth control. And that doctrinal resistance isn’t limited to the rank-and-file; many parish priests tergiversate on Church teachings, too. Which doesn’t even begin to count the numerous “Catholics” who continue to identify as such for cultural and familial reasons, but are otherwise outright lapsed, who haven’t given a thought to attending Sunday Mass in ages.
Ken, you win the thread!
Most of the Catholics I know (which includes almost the whole of the maternal side of my family) are no more religious than my secular Jewish friends who celebrate Seder, take Yom Kippur off work, pick up a box of rugelach on the weekend, and hang the mezuzah mom gave them by the door before she comes over to visit.
In both instances, it’s about cultural identity, nothing more.
Maintenance on the covenant – is that related to building the Ark? OK, I’ll leave now …
Nice one.
As a parochial-school kid, I crossed a few nuns I’d have just as soon pulled out of the convent and put on an ark without a paddle.
Just for the word “tergiversate”
I meant in reply to Hele: “Ken, you win the thread!”
It’s a ‘team’ matter. Just as people can wear their team’s merchandise they don’t necessarily play the game themselves or even attend matches. They are pleased when their team wins, but the sadness of their team losing is soon forgotten.
You could say, then, that the polling stats on the number of Christians in the U.S. is probably way off. If you consider believers with definite doctrinal beliefs as opposed to cultural identity motives, there are far fewer Christians and maybe far fewer religious. That’s a spiritually elevating thought.
Excellent excursus, Mr. Kucek! In the small city where I have lived the last 4+ decades of my life, the Irish-descended Catholics rule. Literally. From dog-catcher to state senator the incumbent’s surname is likely to be Brady. These folks, like Italian-Americans, are thoroughly tribal, and the church is one of their most important pow-wow places.
And what can you say about little Timothy Doland, it’s all bad. He got his big promotion to cardinal by discovering a great way to protect church money while working in Milwaukee for the church there. They hid millions of dollars in the graveyard fund so the victims could not get anything. He denied it all of course but he got the big job in New York not long after. He can get you through bankruptcy better than Donald Trump.
And don’t forget cardinal Pell’s (the dude totally pwned by Dawkins…) song by Tim Minchin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtHOmforqxk
Ridicule, a most powerful weapon vs religious idiocy (or any other).
The church gets its power by dint of its Roman style law as an institution, and of course owns a huge amount of property. I gather in Rome it owns a huge amount of property too. The sex scandals are part of the celibacy thing and originally I think instituted to protect the wealth and power of the church by focussing the allegiance of clergy on the church itself. Unfortunately I suspect that is still part of the reason the church is powerful today; it both puts the clergy on a different, unimpeachable plane to the laity, it protects the finances and brings stability and loyalty to the church.
Also the Church still has its own mini state in the Vatican protecting it from legal issues because it has the status of a state.
Lastly, even if liberalism and publicising of the scandals means it drives its Western faithful away and south american faithful are 25% less already it wont lose its African faithful. Hence Pope Francis keeps telling us modern ways are corrupt.
The church does teach some very good things – its just bound up with other things like teaching on divorce and contraception, male only clergy etc. And it does do good charitable work.
In most Western countries these days the priests and nuns don’t deal directly with children only lay people do, and in Australia at least, the Church offers a good education at reasonable price, and takes non catholics as well as catholics.
But the clerical structure and institutional norms are the base of its power, including doctrinal power, and in places with weak transactional accountability and low education like some parts of Italy it appears to act as its own mini state to the population
Travels in Sicily
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/travels-in-sicily/7011678
I think religion has a place for some people and at some times; it just needs to be kept in the right place, or called out when acting inappropriately
PS in 1922 as I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site the then Pope issued a directive to bishops and archbishops obliging them to protect sex abusing priests from the arm of the law of the secular state – something presumably only uncovered by the exposure of some secret papers by the secretary of Benedict XVI – this has been revealed by a former Australian judge – it was part of the Churches strategy to remain independent of the power of the Italian state.
Sex abuse and international secrecy imposed by the Vatican
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport/how-canon-law-prevented-sex-abuse-by-clery-being-reported-to-po/5500940
The Vatican should not exist as a state and many other things should change about the church.
Just because one’s enemies are morally bankrupt and evil, doesn’t mean that they’re stupid. The payback (in terms of reduced penalties, and failures of prosecutions through time-outs and technical failures) for these couple of million of lobbying fees could easily be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Very sensible move. I take it that they’ve been listening to the advice of their lawyers. Totally aimed at preventing damaged people from getting justice, but since when did churches have any relationship to morality.