In light of Jesse Jackson's recent comments about Barack Obama I was wondering how you all felt about holding religious leaders to a higher moral standard
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I think far too many people expect their religious leaders to be perfect and lose faith or trust in them when they prove not to be. That just sets them up to fail and is just generally ridiculous.
There's a difference between expecting perfection and expecting morality. A priest who, say, lies and a priest who molests little boys are two completely different things. I don't expect religious leaders to be perfect. I don't expect that they not tell a lie every now and then, or perhaps feel lust or let a curse word slip. I do, however, expect that someone calling themselves a "man of God" should be held to a higher moral standard than molesting children.
I think so, but only in so much that they consider THEMSELVES so superior and have the gall to judge others based solely on a personal belief system (so read often completely capriciously and without qualified proofs).
Though to clarify, outside of their position of power I judge them the same as anyone else. So if they are lying to their congregation, I judge them more harshly than if the same priest was lying to someone off the street, in which case I judge them like I would any other liar. If they preach against lying in church and then go off and lie to people IRL, then I judge them the same as any other liar/hypocrite.
All adults are in a position of power with respect to children, distinguishing between better and worse forms of child molestation is sort of bullshit. I did judge the priests who covered it up more harshly than I do when laypeople cover stuff up though, because again, they are abusing their authority.
There are no better or worse forms of molestation, and I would certainly hope you wouldn't think that I believe there are. However, look at it this way. When a person that grows up in an abusive environment surrounded by drugs, alcohol, and promiscuous sex turns into an adult that indulges in drugs, alcohol, and promiscuous sex while raising his family in an abusive environment people find it wrong. However, when a person from a perfectly "normal" family does these things people find it more wrong. Killing someone for money is wrong, killing someone because they are a different color than you is more wrong. There are varying degrees of wrong.
An average dude molesting a kid is wrong. A priest doing it is more wrong. Is the act any worse between the two? No. However, the priest is worse for doing it than the average dude.
I absolutely agree with those first two, because the first set of guys have totally different ideas of what is normal and the second set of guys have totally different motivations.
But child molestation is almost uniformly the same shit, it's all to fulfill a power fantasy, both the average priest and the average layperson will know that it's wrong, they both involve abuses of power and trust.
I would say that an abusive priest is a little more frightening to a parent, maybe so it depends on what level I am looking at it from. Since kid's are naturally naive and trusting, there is always a betrayal, but a parent would probably only trust the priest (though there are plenty of naive adults out there too), so maybe a priest is "worse" for doing it, but the difference is so slight and it's already so far off from any sort of moral behavior that it feels like splitting hairs at that point. Eh, whatever.
I don't think a leader (any leader) should be judged more harshly for a crime they've committed than any other person would be. Everyone is equal under the law. That being said: any kind of leader, especially a religious one, should be held accountable for their sins and a leader should be held accountable for a failure to live up to his or her station.
But also, as a leader should accept the gravity of his failures, the public should be able to accept repentance. This reminds me of the character Robert Sippel from Oz. He was a priest who was convicted of molestation and (just about) everyone in the prison despises him. That most people, including the CO's and the outside world, do not accept Sippel's desire for atonement despite his admittance that what he did was wrong, that it could never be taken away, his acceptance that the did it, and his genuine want to repent for what he did, is complete hypocrisy on their part.
We should all be wary to not become the monsters we seek to expose.
That being said: any kind of leader, especially a religious one, should be held accountable for their sins and a leader should be held accountable for a failure to live up to his or her station. That is, he or she must accept that they have a kind of height in their responsibilities and the gravity thereof.
I didn't mean the phrase to be taken completely literally. Though I do see everyone as equal, all things considered, equality does not mean the individual has no accountability for his or her actions.
However, we're not considering all things in this context, we're only considering their position in society and their own proclaimed ideals. In those two areas, they have elevated themselves above the rest of us, and thus when those two things play a contributing factor in their moral culpability, their culpability is as elevated as they are.
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There's a difference between expecting perfection and expecting morality. A priest who, say, lies and a priest who molests little boys are two completely different things. I don't expect religious leaders to be perfect. I don't expect that they not tell a lie every now and then, or perhaps feel lust or let a curse word slip. I do, however, expect that someone calling themselves a "man of God" should be held to a higher moral standard than molesting children.
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Can I steal that?
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Not that I think Jackson's comments about Obama are some sort of moral issue, who gives a shit?
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All adults are in a position of power with respect to children, distinguishing between better and worse forms of child molestation is sort of bullshit. I did judge the priests who covered it up more harshly than I do when laypeople cover stuff up though, because again, they are abusing their authority.
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An average dude molesting a kid is wrong. A priest doing it is more wrong. Is the act any worse between the two? No. However, the priest is worse for doing it than the average dude.
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But child molestation is almost uniformly the same shit, it's all to fulfill a power fantasy, both the average priest and the average layperson will know that it's wrong, they both involve abuses of power and trust.
I would say that an abusive priest is a little more frightening to a parent, maybe so it depends on what level I am looking at it from. Since kid's are naturally naive and trusting, there is always a betrayal, but a parent would probably only trust the priest (though there are plenty of naive adults out there too), so maybe a priest is "worse" for doing it, but the difference is so slight and it's already so far off from any sort of moral behavior that it feels like splitting hairs at that point. Eh, whatever.
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But also, as a leader should accept the gravity of his failures, the public should be able to accept repentance. This reminds me of the character Robert Sippel from Oz. He was a priest who was convicted of molestation and (just about) everyone in the prison despises him. That most people, including the CO's and the outside world, do not accept Sippel's desire for atonement despite his admittance that what he did was wrong, that it could never be taken away, his acceptance that the did it, and his genuine want to repent for what he did, is complete hypocrisy on their part.
We should all be wary to not become the monsters we seek to expose.
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However, the question was about moral culpability not legal. Not everyone is equal in a moral sense.
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I didn't mean the phrase to be taken completely literally. Though I do see everyone as equal, all things considered, equality does not mean the individual has no accountability for his or her actions.
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However, we're not considering all things in this context, we're only considering their position in society and their own proclaimed ideals. In those two areas, they have elevated themselves above the rest of us, and thus when those two things play a contributing factor in their moral culpability, their culpability is as elevated as they are.
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