Read

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http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8360/

Comments

[anonymous]

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I'm afraid you're buying into the propaganda. But then you know nothing about the Church. The author, like myself, grew up in it. I know all about abusing priests; they are much rarer than (for instance) financially criminal priests. But if you let the newspapers write the story for you, I can't help it. I know the facts, you know what the whores of the press pass on to you.

[anonymous]

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Considering that this is my freedom of speech, belief and expression that is in danger - and it is in danger here and now in this country - I will certainly kick as hard as I can before it is too late. When you realize I am right, it will probably be too late. I regret that you have seen fit to believe the haters, the liars, the liberticides and the whores.

Goodbye, Rebecca. Get back in touch when you realize I am right on this.

[cheyinka]

I'm not surprised that at least one secular humanist sees something to dislike about the current fury, and I may myself borrow his point that Events of the (sometimes distant) past which nobody can change are being used to justify dangerous trends in the present. A new kind of society is being solidified on the back of exposing abusive priests, one in which scaremongering supersedes facts, where people redefine themselves as permanently damaged victims, where freedom of thought is problematised, and where parents are considered suspect for not adhering to the superior values of the atheistic elite.

I would be surprised to find that this essay changed anyone's mind, however, or that using the above point in conversation did anything but buy me some time off from hearing about it from my friends. (None of my offline friends are Catholic.)

[fpb]

I have already been forced to defriend one person who had bought into the NYT pack-o-lies (I won't dignify it by the term "narrative"). Things WILL get worse before they get better.

[elegant_bonfire]

I feel like I should print flyers of this article and hand them out.

[fpb]

Spiked Magazine is itself quite good and thought-provoking. Oddly enough, it was started by former Communists, but it is always worth a read.

[elegant_bonfire]

One would hope that the fact that the author is a self-defined atheist would carry some weight with the scaremongers, too.

[fpb]

A very, very forlorn hope. The strange thing is that I have found more than once that the intellectual heirs of serious Marxism actually have more understanding and respect for the Catholic Church than the current liberal-progressive-PC crowd, with its feeble rags of ideology and poorly motivated attitudes. For instance, the last eminent member of the famous Marxist Frankfurt School, Juergen Habermas, has more or less taken the side of the Pope in the current controversies. Likewise, the Spiked people have more than once proved more compatible (and more intellectually solid and responsible) than the Dawkinses and the Pullmans and their benighted followers. But by the same token, they are simply too honest and too responsible to please a crowd whose main characteristic is self-regard and contempt for evidence.

[marielapin]

I thought the article was good, but I'm tired of the whole "if priests could just marry and the church would change the constrictive sex rules this wouldn't have happened" thing.

I liked this one as well:

http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/plante.html

[fpb]

Well, the author is an atheist, and he is one by choice, having been brought up as some sort of Catholic. Can't expect him to give up his little hobby-horses! The important thing is that he has nailed what is really happening and called it by its name. The process is very advanced in Britain, and freedom of religion is really on the edge of being legislated out of existence; and even in Italy there have been some horrible sentences from high courts that seriously impair free speech. Constitutional rights are now trumped by the imagined right not to be offended, and that is something that you should beware of, because it seems to be the mood in the USA as well.

[marielapin]

"Constitutional rights are now trumped by the imagined right not to be offended, and that is something that you should beware of, because it seems to be the mood in the USA as well."

I am sadly well aware of this. Some old college friends and even members of my own family seems to have gotten on this bandwagon.

[panobjecticon]

any idea where i might find the text of the then cardinal ratzinger's 2001 letter to the bishops please?

[panobjecticon]

couldn't find it, try reading this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection - all the guardian has to do is publish the letter

[fpb]

Considering that in the case raised and mangled by the NYT, the Church court had taken up the case long after the state authorities had refused to do anything with it, no, it is not so easy.

[panobjecticon]

are there not other us cases? german, swiss, italian, irish and presumably others bubbling under? it appears to me that the pope has had a couple of bites of the cherry on this (with his letter to the catholics and his speech to the bishops) and rather than killing the issue as could relatively easily have been done, he's allowed enough scope for misunderstanding. i'm not vatican or pope bashing btw, just curious about the issue. i'm also curious about the medical treatments administered in the cases of conviction: does this included chemical castration for instance? and confession for the ordinary catholic, i think i'm aware of the process, but not what it means to someone as such - i'd be grateful if you'd explain from your point of view.