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| quote: | Originally posted by galdamez
You didn't have to say it explicitly. It was implied by the fact that you rebutted the earlier statement, "it is not fair for the church to get that kinda slam for sins done by others." By citing evidence against this, you are implying that the the Catholic Church does deserve that kind of "slam." The problem here is it is not clearly defined who is getting the slam. When I read your comments, I was fairly certain you were criticizing the Catholic Church as a
whole.
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Well perhaps I should have clarified my original statement. Generally when I am referring to the institution of the church, I call it the church. If I am criticizing the religion or its members as a whole, I would refer my criticism to Catholics or Catholicism.
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There's a fine line between criticizing its members and its leaders. Yes, there are numerous reports of the its leaders having been involved in crimes. Does that mean the organization as whole is bad?
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If by organization, you mean priests in local parishes, than by all means you are correct. However, when I refer to the institution of the church, I am referring to those who directly affect vatican policy.
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It depends on high you want to go up. If you can prove the current pope is evil, then perhaps there's merit to what you're saying. If the Catholic Church was aware of such incidents and simply doing nothing about them, then there's even more merit to what you're saying. Past popes? Well, they're dead. Even within organizations that are meant to teach good you'll have some bad seeds. Blaming the organization as a whole is just as ignorant saying, "well, those terrorists attacking our nation are Muslim. Let's attack the Muslim faith." |
Well the mere fact that the vatican is issuing documents designed to cover up church abuse scandals more or less implies that the catholic church on a high level (since all bishops presumably receive such documents) is aware of such incidents and doing nothing about them. Despite the fact that these documents came out in 1962, even today the sex scandalous only came to light only after the media began covering it. And ONLY after the media began covering the issues did the church began earnest efforts to redress these issues rather than the normal practice of keeping things on the down low. This, to me, indicates that there are some very serious problems with the institution itself. Furthermore, the fact that the church has very many good people in it, does not excuse or shield the institution of the church from criticism since it's a top to bottom organization with very little formulation of church policy coming from the majority of church members on a local level. Therefore, one can rightfully criticize the church on the basis of those few members who are dictating policy for the church as a whole.
The only reason why I bring up past transgressions of the church, is to give light to the fact that incidents such as these are not isolated incidents solely attributed to a "few bad seeds", but a large part of the problem is due to the rigid structural hierarchy of the church system, which one can also rightfully criticize.
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Retro ...
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i'm not trying to prove ANYONE wrong, this thread is about abortion ffs and not religion. religion is a wholllllle other story, and even though i don't really practice any religion, i'm not gonna disrespect other ones. all i was saying is that i personally have withdrawn from the Catholic faith based on a LOT of shit that has happened with it in the past. and that's my opinion, so you can't really prove me wrong either. maybe you were too young to hear about all the thousands, YES THOUSANDS, of priests nationwide that were accused of sexual abuse, but it did happen. and that is a fact.
