/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>590401

I don't have stats but I do have friendly advice, don't just compare it to other denoms. Compare it to other religions and even other professions that work with kids, teachers specifically, along with parents in general.

>>590404

yes, stats like that too would be great!

>>590401

The problem is not the amount of pedos, pedos infiltrate everything. The problem was the church covering things up, that was the actual scandal.

>>590407

can you or someone post sources on this? rather, that the numbers arent big as well as the reasons for "covering it up"

Abuse in Catholicism can be comparable, or in some cases even less, than in Protestantism.

The problem is that Protestantism doesn't have a strict hierarchy like Catholicism, so it can be more difficult to gather statistics on them.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/06/24/sexual-abuse-minors-in-protestant-churches.html

>>590401

As far as I know the pedo scandals weren't that huge because of the amount but solely because of the cover-ups.

I don't have any source but I read somewhere that all the known catholic abuse scandals so far aren't even reaching the abuse scandals in the Californian school system in a year.

>>590411

Reasons for cover-ups are only speculations and assumptions, but generally it was the safeguarding of high positions etc.

Also, as catholics we see the sacrament of confession as something sacred and priests cannot disclose anything from a confession.

This also counts as 'not telling' or 'covering up'.

>>590416

Protestants will definitely have more just because you got so many of them and they are all decentralized.

If one out of 1000 or even 10000 is a child molester, then you will eventually get some protestant ministers.

Their luck is that the decentralization makes it that you cannot just blame it on 'protestant church' like you can do with the catholic church because every building is a separate church in protestantism.

If your friends doesn't want to convert because of muh pedos then he also can't become a teacher in elementary or high school for that matter.

He's just looking for a way to keep the moral high ground because nor catholics nor protestants preach pedophilia and even condemn it.

This should be enough to show him that men are fallible and that when someone evil who's part of a group does something evil does not mean that the whole group is evil.

>>590444

>He's just looking for a way to keep the moral high ground because nor catholics nor protestants preach pedophilia and even condemn it.

The problem with this scandal is that the leadership of the catholic church was protecting the priests responsible, even after there was no doubt they were responsible. This of course sends a strong message to anyone else who might think about getting away with this, but the ultimate scandal was that they refused to discipline the person but instead tried to downplay and act like it is not a big deal and just moved them to another location. In other words, the leadership who made this decision care more about optics than about preventing this from happening.

Therefore, the real scandal is the fact that the whole leadership is in tacit approval that such acts are acceptable to remain in clergy. That's something my church would never do and I can't see why any church would. But instead, this was all just minimized to the point of covering up the facts and trying to change the issue so people wouldn't focus on that fact.

>and priests cannot disclose anything from a confession.

That is also wrong, by the way. It creates a huge web of mutually complicit actors. So now they have to cover each other, even the worst possible offenders, or it will be revealed how much they really knew without saying anything. Which may be part of the explanation for the above.

I've heard that the worst child abuse came from Irish Catholic communities around the world (Irish Americans, Irish Australians, Irish in England etc).

Compare 141 suspected priests and brothers in Ireland (population 4.7 million), with 94 suspected priests and brothers in Germany (population 82 million). The numbers in France also appear much smaller compared to Ireland.

http://www.dw.com/en/abuse-allegations-mount-at-german-catholic-church/a-5224213

http://www.thejournal.ie/allegations-child-abuse-religious-jesuit-orders-2320670-Sep2015/

In Australia, which has a large Irish Catholic community, the Catholic Church had much higher rates of abuse compared to other religions - Catholics 37% of abuse, Anglicans 9%, Baptists 0.6%, Lutherans 0.3%.

https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/speeches/national-council-churches

The Catholic Church in Boston (America), which also has a large Irish Catholic community, was infamous for child sex abuse.

One explanation is that the Ancient Celts had entrenched pederastic practices, more so than other ancient European tribes.

>>590461

>tfw part Irish

I always kind of associated pedo priests with the Irish anyway because of Calvary (good movie, btw) but those facts are pretty astounding. I'm interested in other explanations though. I feel like it can't all be due to their pagan roots, can it?

>>590401

>>590457

I’m gonna be honest, I always thought Catholic sex abuse was one of the worst scandals ever. I always thought the Catholic Church was one of the most horrible organizations because of it, and that they had one of the largest and worst cover ups in the history of sex abuse. However, after looking into child abuse in public schools, the porn industry, the gay community, and the most recent Hollywood scandals, I’ve realized the Catholic Church actually handles their stuff much better than anyone else. That being said, “relatively better” doesn’t mean good, and many Catholic leaders are still pieces of shit for moving around clergymen instead of defrocking them and calling the police.

>>590416

I am not going to state that you are wrong, because I do not have other stats either way. You state that it is comparable or less, then you state you cant really tell because of the decentralization. But you then give evidence against both points by posting stats that show Catholics are much more likely to abuse. Irregardless of a deeper debate, you undue your own post within your post. That is really all I am commenting on. Just in case anyone is unfamiliar with math, the article does say Proty is about 260 a year with Caths around 228, but Catholics are less than half the number of Protestants, which makes Caths about twice as likely to abuse.

>>590495

Additionally, the article main point to me is to just highlight that child abuse does happen in other churches as well. Which I do think needs to be highlighted and prosecuted where ever it happens. So that point is valid, but to use it as an apology or defense for Catholics is miss guided I think.

>>590461

>The Catholic Church in Boston (America), which also has a large Irish Catholic community, was infamous for child sex abuse.

This reminds me that one of my uncles was almost a victim. There was this gym teacher at the Catholic school he attended, he started having 'special after-school activities' with the athletic kids. This expanded to 'special get-away' trips with him and a few kids locked away in rural New England cabins.

My uncle and his friend were about to go away on one of his trips. The friend's father was oblivious to the situation, and he said it was okay. My grandfather was a police officer at the time, he knew exactly what was going on, and said absolutely not.

After the teacher was caught, he took one of the kids (15 years old at the time) with him all the way to SanFran. It was a huge thing, parents had to fly out to get him back from the guy. I'm just glad the cardinal who tried to keep it silent is in a nice corner of hell for what he had done. To think, you can't even trust your own church, a pillar of your community, because they wanted to hide the fact that children were being molested to save their reputation.

So what about not having a nursery or Sunday school classes at all, and homeschooling? Every time an adult gives his kid away to another adult, he plays a roulette game with that kid's innocence.

Here is an excerpt or two from a Trent Horn book that helps me with evangelizing when it comes to this particular topic.

"Ernie Allen, the director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said in an interview with Newsweek magazine, "We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has bigger problems than anyone else. I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others."

"According to John Jay College of Criminal Justice, about 4 percent of priests who served between 1950 and 2002 have been accused of sexual abuse (note that accusations do not always mean that a crime was committed). Insurance company premiums suggest that similar rates of abuse exist in Protestant churches. According to one insurance industry spokeswoman, "Our claims experience shows this happens evenly across denominations."

This doesn't justify anything and it doesn't make anything right just because "it happens evenly" but it goes to show that the Catholic Church is not the only one with this problem, that for the most part is getting a lot smaller with seminaries and religious institutions really cracking down on weeding out potential chomos. TL;DR, it's statistically as bad for every denomination, and it's getting a lot better than it was decades ago.

Also adding onto what >>590404 said, imagine you are a child. Statistically speaking, you would be more likely to be abused by a teacher or in a school environment than to be abused by the clergy. Out of many institutions such as the school systems and the hospitals, the Church seems to be the at the bottom of this offender chain for the most part. However, some people like >>590407 will argue that this isn't the problem, the problem is that these offenders were defended and simply moved around dioceses. This is a very controversial subject that already has several other posters typing about it, so I will just further promote >>590862 's point about pedophilia at the time (the peak was in the 70s and 80s) being treated as a curable mental ailment rather than grounds for termination.

Thank you, anon! My friend is a lost fool who snap chatted me some link about the pedo priests and how "Catholicism is a scam" and so I prayed to God to show me what to say and this thread is exactly my situation! Thank you and God bless you!

To be fair, I don't blame the people with the reservations about Catholicism because of the pedos. We can not see in their hearts to what level it becomes an excuse to ignore God outright and these priests have led millions astray with their evil acts. Also, doesn't the point that they are priests and should be trustworthy moral pillars add to how treacherous it is? Obviously teachers and so on who do this also betray trust and decent character, and people always confuse priests as being morally superior (they are sinners too with a different vocation). Not that it hand-waves any of this vile business away or anything, I'm just trying to work out an argument.

Pray for all the souls who are lost and choose to stay lost because of the priests who fail in their responsibility in the worst way possible, though. And of course pray for the kids and much more so the priests.

>>591184

>these priests have led millions astray

To be honest, one of the sources mentioned that people mostly leave catholicism for other reasons (Church's stance on sex, abortion, etc.) rather then pedo priests.

>>591186

Would be great if we had stats on general population to determine if homos have anything to do with that.

>everybody is with the pope because he's a liberal, friendly hippy pope. He is with the poor people, ask for pardon evryday

>he ask for proof to condemn a bishop in Chile about the allegations of protecting a pedo

>suddenly is not so cool for the media, liberal frends

it really blows your mind

>>591271

>people mostly leave catholicism for other reasons (Church's stance on sex, abortion, etc.) rather then pedo priests.

Of course, but using the pedo priests as an excuse keeps them in the moral high ground.

>Would be great if we had stats on general population to determine if homos have anything to do with that.

Obviously they got something to do with it.

You want me to think you're still straight if you have sex with little boys?

>>591186

While there is no doubt a substantial amount of priests who are accused and convicted of these acts have same-sex attractions, the idea among many pedophiles is that children are essentially a sexual experience beyond that of grown adults their age. Not speaking from experience, thankfully, but I can only imagine that the act itself is not significantly any more efficient or pleasurable than having sex with an adult virgin. The appeal itself is that it is an experience beyond gender or physical stimulation, it's of course a power play. Young children are defenseless and acts with them are shunned by society, and boys are only more tempting due to their exotic nature. You have to keep in mind, up until the age of around 10-12ish, boys and girls underneath the clothing are essentially featureless and non-distinct aside from their genitalia, so there is in reality almost no difference when it comes to these pedos, they just find boys more tempting because not only is it a purely dominating and evil act to force upon a child, it also is seen as more controversial because of the media's "boys/men don't get molested" narrative that makes molesting boys seem more exotic as well as violating natural law. Combined, these two factors plant a bigger evil seed into the back of a young boy's mind, telling him that not only was he violated by his elders, presumably someone he/the public trusts, but according to the news it's most likely his own fault since "this isn't supposed to happen" and because it was a man who did it he may be influenced by this act and become a homosexual in his later life, possibly even repeating this act. So it's both nothing to do with gender with these sodomites but at the same time they prefer boys just because it's more satisfying to corrupt them. It's confusing but this generally seems to be the reason for their actions.

Why do I presume members of the clergy were often accused of specifically being caught with young boys? Perhaps in their shoes, you're in this position of power that channels the power of God and his apostles through blessings and confession and more, as well as being a public figure that is trusted and even praised for his and the rest of the clergy's work. The title of a priest, deacon, bishop, cardinal, etc is a big undertaking and one that holds a lot of power and responsibility, so as a result it can get to one's head. Why wouldn't the Devil aim to damage the Church by damaging it from the inside? So this priest may lose his way and get a big head or a sinful person may enter the ranks unnoticed and such an act of molesting a young boy seems to be an excellent outlet of expressing his untouchable position. While atheistic child molesters are clueless as to why they desire this power, the corrupted priest is aware that there is a God. Why is this important? Let's recap the situation, you have a young boy in your care. You decide to corrupt his innocence and virginity, betray his trust, hurt him physically/mentally/emotionally/etc, possibly infect him with a deadly virus, and through your actions he is molded into a completely different human being from your intervention. The boy becomes depressed and self-hating, especially confused; this action will to his life until the day he dies. He may even decide that it was meant to happen and it may lead to becoming a sodomite and spreading this "gift" to other victims and sodomites. This is a grave act to commit, one that essentially molds a person into a completely different being; it is one that could make an already pious yet corrupt man feel like he is on the same level as the incomprehensible God, or even above him.

>>591186

>Whatever the sin it cannot be told no matter how your feelings are in terms of wrong or right.

I disagree wholeheartedly.

>>591383

>Opinions

>>591361

Please give a tl;dr of that text wall.

>>591432

TL;DR (sort of) The view among pedophiles is that a sexual act with a child that is the same-sex is generally not seen as entirely homosexual within the pedophile community because they tend to view children as beyond gender and physical pleasure since they are under-developed enough to have much difference aside from their genitalia so it becomes more of a power play for them, regardless of sexual orientation. They insist someone could be married to a woman and have sex with many adult women and then have sex with young boys and still be 100% heterosexual. (I agree that it's gay regardless though) They prefer boys because they are seen as more exotic and easily corrupted as homosexual acts are already against natural law anyways so that on top of molesting them is a hell of a combo. So they don't really see gender at that age but at the same time they prefer boys. It's weird but that seems to be the case.

>>591441

>within the pedophile community

There wouldn't be one if you would stop protecting them and not treat them like the beasts they are.

even just one pedophile in our clergy is one too much, a single case of molestation one too much; the numbers are inflated, indeed, but we should be always sure the real number is 0 at all times and that if there's any priest who did or does it, he gets stripped of his role as a shepherd and severely punished (I'd suggest reopening salt mines in Sicily and send them there…for like 20 years).

>>591470

>mfw Italian

>mfw from Liguria

>mfw I deserve to be burnt at the stakes for my past sins

Yup, we lost our ways.

>>590862

>80% of victims were boys

>100% of the abusers were man

>no connection with homosexuality

Really, brother?

>>590862

>No connection to homosexuality, personally I don't believe it but that's what some sources stated so I'm copying it here. They said reason for this is because priests had more contact with boys then girls.

If you honestly believe this, there si something veryu, very wrong with your brain

>>591446

>Implying we protect a whole syndicate of all pedophiles in the world

>Implying that only the catholic church has pedophiles and they don't exist outside of it

>>591630

so the card doesn't even have an effect and it's a continuous trap? you activate it, it does nothing and wastes a spell and trap zone? what a stupid card

to understand the cases of child abuse you must first understand that it's done by homossexuals (mostly) and the amount of homossexuals inside the clergy.

i see people showing statistics on the cases but not a single one linking the statistics to the % of homossexuals inside the clergy.

the problem DOES NOT LIE in the priesthood nor celibacy, it lies with the fact there are GAY PRIESTS inside the Church.