An obvious remark nobody has made yet

[fpb]

The ending of World War Two engulfed all countries, victor and neutral, into a tide of horror. Even the Soviet Union, whose government had little to learn from Nazism at its worst, found it easy to show, indeed to feel, horror at what its troops discovered in the early months of 1945 in dozens of camps from Majdanek to Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

Comments

[virginia_fell]

Your points about the Catholic Church during the time of the Nazis were a really good read, and an important perspective. I would have loved to have your sources in there, though, if only so that the next time I see that argument about the RCC I can not merely repeat what you said but actually link to new information.

I do find it curious that you blame the pervasive sheltering of pedophiles within the Catholic church on secular culture, when it's the religious nature of the organization that protects it from the kind of accountability that, say, the ASPCA or the Red Cross would have if it developed the same reputation for aiding and abetting pedophiles. When the organization punishes priests more harshly for wanting to ordain women than for molesting local children, I think we have a problem with the actual priorities of the organization itself for which we can't just shift accountability away

[fpb]

I see you are a shareholder in the lie factory. Find out the ratio of paedophiles among American schoolteachers. Then find out how many have gone to jail or lost their jobs. As for the Catholic Church (as opposed to individual bishops) "protecting abusers" and doing so "for religious reasons", if you seriously believe any of this nonsense then facts are beyond your and I will not even bother presenting any.

[virginia_fell]

Y'know, I don't think I was enough of an asshole to you to deserve that kind of dismissal. You're not even going to cite sources for the things I agreed with you on?

Here are some of the reasons I feel there is a pattern of sheltering pedophiles in the Catholic church that goes beyond the actions of a few isolated individual bishops whose behavior cannot be said to represent their organization.

WI bishops opposed Wisconsin legislation to repeal the statute of limitations on child abuse cases. Whom does that one help, eh? They don't like sex abuse legislation in Connecticut or New York or the D.C. area or Denver or basically anywhere.

New Report Shows Extent of Priest Abuse in Chicago
The percentage of parishes and institutions ministered by credibly accused priests approached 25% in the mid-1990's. In 2009, one in five institutions in the archdiocese still had a credibly accused priest in residence

[fpb]

You just gave me an amazing list of reasons to confirm my view that you are a fully-paid-up shareholder in the Lie Factory. The shit about "blame the Jews" alone would prove beyond reasonable doubt that you go hunting for reasons to hate the Church with a lantern. There is no distortion too fucking ridiculous for you not to take it as the light of day. You are evidently looking for nothing but reasons to believe that Catholic priests are abusers and people like me their enablers. That being the case, why should I even bother to answer any of your trash? Your theory assumes that I and people like me are complicit. If I am, you have nothing to gain by having anything to do with me, and if I am not, then the position you have taken is so outrageous that, if you weren't a woman, my only honourable course would be to ask you to step outside and repeat it. Either way, there is no evidence in anything you say that any kind of reasonable dialogue can be started with you. But that is an astounding feature of Catholic and Christian haters of

[eliskimo]

I may have mis-read either fpb's writing or yours, but I don't think he said anything about the "pervasive sheltering of pedophiles" being the doing of secular culture. I think he said that priests who abuse children are giving into a side of the sexualization of secular culture. In fact, if I'm reading him correctly, he implied that bishops who protect such priests are just as guilty

OT

[fpb]

If that copy is by any chance electronic, could I have a copy? I am currently studying the Longobard Code of Rothari (which has a few interesting surprises of the same kind, such as that the murder of one's wife was one of a very small group of crimes punishable by death and punished by the king - comparable in this to high treason in warfare and plotting against the King).

Re: OT

[eliskimo]

I don't know if it's online. Mine is a bound copy:

The Burgundian Code: Book of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad and Additional Enactments,
Translation by Katherine Fischer Drew, Published by the University of Philadelphia Press, 1949, Third paperback edition, 1988, ISBN (paperback) 0-8122-1035-2