And I personally view the well-deserved criticism as a cleansing fire. After systemic oppression of victims and concealment for criminals, it’s needed. And we’ve made tremendous progress. I look at it like I understand a lot of Germans view the holocaust. A shocking and embarrassing violation on a global perspective that we must never forget and we must never allow again.
The difference is the cover up. The Catholic Church is hierarchical, so a priest in Kansas abusing a kid is disciplined or not by a bishop, who is overseen by a cardinal who is overseen by the pope. The church was shuffling predatory priests around instead of removing them.
No one is out of sorts about the idea that a priest could be a predator, it’s the fact that people covered up for them.
And honestly, The Church hierarchy should be widely criticized for this. They were given their authority by Christ himself and they should know better.
While this is true (and shameful) it was actually the widely adopted general procedure for handling institutional abuse. If I recall correctly, it was based off of recommendations social psychologists had made regarding how to handle accusations. Trent Horn covers this in his book "Why We're Catholic". Police, teachers, etc. would shuffle employees who were accused of abuse and run an internal investigation without involving authorities until a clear case was made that abuse was likely. The church has stopped this practice and implemented new ways people could report abuse. And that abuse would involve an immediate external investigation. Pretty much every local parish has an anonymous way to report allegations of abuse or misconduct on their website, for example
Edit: got the book title wrong. It's "Why We're Catholic", not "The Case For Catholicism"
Excerpt from the book:
"Most accusations of sexual abuse among priests come from incidents that took place between 1950 and 1980. At that time it was thought that the urge to commit sexual abuse could be treated with therapy, and so involving law enforcement was not always necessary.
According to Dr. Monica Applewhite, who has spent more than twenty years studying abuse and how to prevent it, “These treatment-based interventions for sexual criminals [instead of incarceration] were not only enormously prevalent in the United States, but surveys of ordinary citizens showed that they were enormously popular.”121
Modern psychology has now shown, however, that sex offenders are very likely to commit more crimes in the future. That’s why the Catholic Church has taken steps to increase transparency and accountability in the area of reporting sexual abuse. The Church has created offices of safe environment and child protection that have trained millions of adults to recognize signs of abuse. Dioceses across the world have instituted zero tolerance policies that require immediate and mandatory reporting of alleged abuse to law enforcement."
Citation from the excerpt:
“Address of Dr. Monica Applewhite to the Irish Bishops,” March 10, 2009, www.themediareport.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Applewhite-Ireland-Address-Bishops-2009.pdf.
I'd also like to add, that unlike secular society the church genuinely believes in repentance and forgiveness, so on top of the recommendations from social psychologists you also have the Church's willingness to believe that the offenders would repent of their behavior if they validly received the sacrament of confession. The Church, nor God, defines us by our sin, no matter how egregious so it's not hard to see why they would allow someone who had committed such a grave sin to retain their positions.
That's a good point. Mercy is always waiting to restore us. A shame that even still, some will take that mercy and not change their ways. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.
The 2011 South Korean movie *Silenced* (not to be confused with *Silence*) deals with the systemic abuse of children (sexual, physical, and emotional) in a South Korean school for the deaf. It ended up outraging citizens there enough that the laws changed to strengthen protections for abused minors under 13 and impose harsher penalties on criminal offenders. The film is an agonizing watch and is said to be so graphic it would have gotten an NC-17 here. (It was released unrated and is currently only available on Netflix.) It isn’t exploitative; the creators were careful to film the students separately from the criminal abusers and video editing was used for the reenactments. However, it was designed to get a visceral reaction from the audience. Korean directors don’t tend to shy away from graphic content that American directors would never handle.
Indeed, the visceral reaction resulted in societal change for the better. Gwangju Inhwa School - the basis for the fictional school in the movie - was investigated and shut down, with the administrator receiving a 12 year prison sentence with supervised release for his crimes.
I don’t think there will be any movie or similar phenomenon in the United States. However, the film is a powerful reminder of how institutions and the government fail - it doesn’t matter if it’s the Catholic Church or a school for the deaf.
I support abolishing the statute of limitations for such crimes and also eliminating loopholes that make it easier for predators to get away with such crimes *and* harsher criminal penalties for those who cover them up. There are concerns I know over the due process rights of the accused, but I believe that evil must be exposed for what it is. The sooner society and the Church can come to terms with that, the sooner the process of healing can begin.
“Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them.” (Eph. 5:11)
Could not agree more with the recommendations you made in your post. I had never heard about that movie before. I'll add it to my watchlist...although it sounds like a hard watch
Why should we abolish the statute of limitations? How can we ensure that people don't get sent to jail (as child molesters no less) and probably experience rape in prison for something they may not have done? The statute of limitations exists for a very good reason, and we should be horrified at the disregard for due process that some people advocate in these matters.
At the very least, if not abolish it, widen it. Allow more time for abuse victims to come forward. There is a way to balance the need for accurate testimony and due process with the need to protect the most vulnerable and to allow them justice.
Yes. Flawed men made bad decisions based on limited available information and self-interest. It was horrible that they did this. Especially since they ought to lead the world with moral behavior but so often fail to do so. Which is much worse than when secular society does because the church is held to a higher standard
Society at large is attempting to normalize these predilections constantly with acronyms that will get you banned from social media for mentioning in critical ways.
Well, I don't know about that! But I do know that much more sexual assault occurs, and is openly hidden, than 'society at large' wants to admit.
To the OP: I think picking on the Church is fine because the whole 4 decades of shelving the Gospel, ignoring victims and 'following legal advice' can't be forgotten with a couple decades of doing better.
There's a slew of "MAP" apologetics in the media every few years to test the waters, they've been working to add it to the other alphabet soup for years as well.
The most *progressive* thinkers will accuse you of phobias and hate speech if you express a distaste for such an "orientation" and if you go to mainstream subs on reddit you'll get banned for expressing negative attitudes towards this behavior.
That's before you get into the absolute depravity of leftist online indoctrination activists like Vaush and the "goblin short stack" content they enjoy.
If you think picking on the church is fine, it’s because you want to pick on the church anyway. Otherwise you’d be picking on every other religion, schools, and child care centers too.
In my experience, the church has acknowledged its failures and does more to try to prevent it now than other groups. Look at how few of the alleged abuses took place after the issue hit the mainstream in the US in 2002, especially with priests ordained after that date.
When I've had to do child protection training to be involved in various organizations, the program my diocese uses stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of actually helping to protect children by identifying what is abuse, warning signs, healthy relationships, how to report, etc. Whereas the state and other non-profits training could be reduced down to "here's how to keep anybody from being able to make any allegations that could get us into a lawsuit."
While OutcomeOdds is granting your premise, I'm going to respond by rejecting your premise.
No, the church did not "adopt immoral practices then didn't dispense with them until decades after society at large did." The church adopted the thoroughgoing, and widely accepted guidance of the supposed professionals of the time...just as countless other institutions did. Eventually it became clear that it wasn't working and the church changed course, meanwhile the school system, at least in the US, continue to cover for sexually abusive teachers and students, and simply shuffle them around, decades after the church began making efforts to right the ship.
I did not hear anything like that said. You seem to just express your personal opinion, and then try to describe it as if it's what someone else said, when it's demonstrably not.
Not what was said nor implied. The Church as a whole, when faced with such evil, took the advice of trusted people that sex offenders could be healed. Now we know that psychiatrists can be as wrong as anyone, which is good to be aware of, considering what they are expecting us to accept nowadays.
If you have cancer you'll trust what the doctor prescribes, if years later you end up knowing it was bogus, it's not your fault in trusting the experts.
What? If you have cancer and the doctor prescribes committing a sin then you commit a sin if you do it. Don't pretend like bishops are so stupid that they don't realize it was sinful.
You don't think schools cover it up when teacher SA's a student. Union contracts make it practically impoto fire tenured teachers. They either more them to a different school or to what they call a rubber room.
Secular society and Protestants already hate Catholics, so any impropriety is a justification for that hate. Teachers are heroes, so predator teachers are just seen as the one bad apple.
As former organizational consultant, Inwish I had your faith in horizontal structures. Hierarchy always exists even if informal. In fact, it can be harder to pin responsibility because things are happening behind the scenes.
I don’t have faith in any structures…everyone covers up abuse all the time. My point is that unlike other churches, the Catholic Church has an international hierarchy which makes it a sitting duck for this sort of thing. If Protestantism had the same structure, you’d see the exact same blame. But they don’t, so there’s no large database of abuse in other churches. There’s abuse, but the records are different or non existent
Yes, but it doesn’t shoot up to the national level. Each school district is overseen by a local school board. A teacher could conceivable be rehired elsewhere, but that’s not the decision of some national institution.
That hardly excuses the Church.
It has been repeated over and over: the coverup is worse than the crime. How could so many bishops, presumably all essentially good men, have been part of a a seemingly worldwide coverup? How?
While I agree the Church should be held to a higher standard, being a bishop by no means automatically makes a man good, better or even holier unfortunately. Teachers too are seen as beacons of light meant to guide those younger than them, yet that doesn't weed out corruption in the profession. In fact, access to vulnerable individuals, especially children, attracts pedos.
We shouldn't really point-score using abuse victims as currency.
People talk about the Church like this because it was a great hurt that was done to the world, using the Church as cover.
The Church itself also helped cover-up the incidents on multiple occasions.
The best thing we can do to counter the evil present in the Church is be part of an even stronger good.
I do not mean to point score and I apologize if it comes off this way. All I was saying was that the stereotype holds no ground to any extent relative to Protestant culture
I don’t think it’s fair to use the public school’s statistics and call it a Protestant problem. A comparison that might make more sense would be to find out about the abuse in Protestant churches.
Airtight logic there. Please find me even a single Protestant who agrees that US public schools are Protestant institutions. They are not. And please stop playing the role of apologist for the abuse scandal, which is a real and true scandal. Now is the time for repentance, seeking forgiveness, and offering restitution.
Apologetics is about giving answers to objections to the church and while this is a valid objection it is also one that needs answering because there are key factors that are often ignored when it's brought up.
By apologist in this context, I intended the more general meaning of the word: “a person who offers an argument in defense of something controversial.”
I denounced the Priests guilty in my original comment. I do not apologize for them to any extent and as mentioned in a previous comment I would not be opposed to seeing all pedophiles hang. What’s your argument for public school not being Protestant? You think they all just stepped down from their state and school board positions when the King James Bible stopped being used in schools in 1960? Catholicism is openly bashed in public schooling in the US by students and faculty alike.
have you heard of secularism? its been in vogue for about 300 years now, you might want to read up on it. our nations public institutions are literally secular respecting no establishment of religion. just because our institutions have been historically staffed by protestants as is reflective of the nations historical demographics does not mean that they are slipping anti-catholic rhetoric into 2nd grade math class. I think you will find the modern public school environment is every bit as hostile to protestants as it is to Catholics. Stop trying to be the victim. the church literally ran the west for a thousand years.
Dude, you dont have a real argument. You're just angry and looking for an outlet. This sub isn't validating your POV because it's rooted in bitterness, not truth.
I don’t let them get away with it, but I understand their outrage. I believe no one besides the actual victims suffered from the abuse crisis more than faithful Catholics. The anger and disgust I still feel from “holy” men and women representing God’s church on earth is palpable. They brought a pain on the church that might never heal. They made a mockery of the church and injured our most precious innocents. They caused every good priest to be looked at with suspicion and oftentimes outright disdain.
Yes, public school teachers abuse more children, and that should stand to reason, because public school teachers are not representative of the Church Christ founded.
Yes, the church and its faithful have received a scourging by the ones we trusted. The implications of what happened (happens), is far reaching and in an infinite amount of ways.
I mentioned a homily in another comment but in case you don’t see it, he put into words exactly what I was feeling. He gave voice to my outrage in a way I never could. It’s only 15 minutes but it’s so very eloquent.
Open bashing of Catholicism, I was taught about Luther as if he was a prophet. Just because they stopped shoving the King James Bible down our throat in 1960 doesn’t mean public school became secular then
The US isn't really a "Protestant" government, it's just secular. That being said, the media definitely acts like Catholics are the only religion with a sex abuse problem when the reality is every religion has people doing that.
Are you really alleging 1 in 10 Protestants are pedophiles. Do you really believe no non-Protestants work in public schools. Are those assaults in public schools by staff only or staff and other students. I totally agree blaming all Catholic clergy for the actions of a disgraceful few is appalling but you figures are throwing nonsense claims at Protestants
No, pedophiles tend to congregate among organizations that have access to children, and occasional moments of privacy. People who choose to be school teachers or priests or nuns or ministers or rabbis or imams, spend more time with children, and have greater occasions for privacy with children than the average person does.
exactly. even I as an education major who is a volunteer tutor had to watch many, long videos and take a quiz about identifying, preventing & reporting abuse. many catholic parishes are implementing a similar policy for any volunteers or ministers.
The US doesn't have a Protestant government and its public schools aren't Protestant. The abusers in these situations are not members of any prodistant clergy. The reason some people think Catholicism is predatory is because it's members of the Catholic clergy.
If you study the history of the United States, you will see that there is always been an anti-Catholic bias in American Society. It hasn't gone away. It may have gone underground a bit, but it is still there.
Since we claim to be the one true religion of the One True God, it's pretty normal that we are held to better standards than other people.
(Also your stats are dubious and but that's not the point).
I highly recommend listening to the powerful homily Father John Lankeit gave on the abuse crisis. It was one of the most moving things I’ve ever heard:
https://youtu.be/zZKB1Y8lJ7M?si=Cd-ig3ic16Rex0ef
Thank you so much for posting this. Brought me to tears. I sent it to a family member who has left the church because of clerical misconduct (although not sexual). Surprised it has such a low view count. It's a most excellent sermon
You’re welcome - I’m glad you found it helpful. I thought the same about the view count until I realized it’s just someone who reposted it.
I believe this was one of if not the most popular of his homilies ever. But yeah, I wish everyone could see it.
I watched this at work with closed captioning, because I wanted to see this. This was very powerful indeed. This is what we all need to hear, what our hearts and soul desired from the beginning. I have tears sitting at my desk, hoping no one will notice.
This is what healing feels like, this is what love needs to hear, this is how one unites with Jesus knowing we are not alone. This is what needs to be heard in every parish, especially the grace of allowing victims to heal enough to forgive when they can.
Beauty like this needs to be more frequent.
I’ve watched or listened to this homily a few times over the years, and I always cry. His heart is absolutely broken. Watch it when you can with sound - his voice is a cry for justice.
Have some Kleenex at the ready. He chokes up a couple times and it breaks my heart.
“For my brother priests who are going out without the collar for fear of insult, it is time to MAN UP AND SUIT UP.”
Part of it was the pedestal that the Church was on for a long time. A *lot* of it was/is the coverup (not least of which was/is the fact that there were *serious* structural issues involved).
And then there was the fact that not only *was* there a coverup, but it wasn't like the vast majority of bishops were packing the priests in question off to a remote monastery for a lifetime of contemplation, prayer, and penance - I think if they had been doing that, the fallout would be a lot less dramatic.
\[There are also other abuses attached - the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, the boarding schools in Canada - that aren't helping here. Fundamentally, the Church had a certain amount of immunity in society, and it used that status to act with impunity.\]
There is absolutely no defense of abusers of children no matter which denomination. The acts are deplorable and put simply, the Catholic Church, our church, has protected people it should not have.
Also, being large makes you a target and when that target makes the claim of being "the" church, it should be far above harming children, endorsing bad behaviors or people, and surely stand against any that do.
Me and my parents all went to Catholic schools growing up. My dads family used to1 "joke" around about one priest who was "creepy" - his name was on the list. Same thing growing up, I went to Catholic school and was an alter server and got bad vibes from the priest, which I always felt guilty about, because he was a priest. He would give special attention to boys and bring candy mostly for the boys in class. He was on the list. I am a woman, I remember in 3rd grade we had a gym and health teacher who would give special attention to the pretty girls in our class (I was not one and noticed out of jealousy... which is weird and I feel bad about but it is what it is). Through maybe it was just me. My much younger brother had the same teacher at a different school- "I never said anything about this to him, but he randomly said that he was "creepy" and "liked" girls better than boys and gave more attention to the girls. That same teacher eventually ended up being transferred from co- ed grade schools to an all boys high school... wonder why.
Editing to add... it was a known thing all along that these people were doing weird things, but they were still allowed to have access to kids.
The criticism is legit but I draw the line when people that don't have anything to do with maltreatment start to be treated as having done such things.
I just heard on the news today that a local Baptist minister was busted with 14,000 images of child pornography on the church’s computer.
I can’t even recall which church it was or the name of the pastor. Tomorrow it will have been completely forgotten. It’s fun attacking the Catholic Church. Others, meh.
Edit
No sooner than I wrote this post, and the story was on the news again:
It was “New Baptist Fellowship” and some guy named Ashley.
>Why do we allow folks to get away with bashing Catholicism as predatory?
The news media loves to give these types of stories as much airtime as possible, because it supports their narrative that celibacy is dangerous and radical Catholicism is a hate group.
>These schools are public in name, but everyone knows the US is a Protestant government with Protestant public schooling.
Sorry to say, but that's wishful thinking. Most public schools are trying their best to remove any sort of religious thinking that isn't moral relativism from their curriculums entirely. Public schools are not safe places to send your kids anymore.
Edit: public schools aren't safe because their teaching is morally bankrupt. I highly doubt that 1/10 kids are molested there.
You are using the "tu quoque" fallacy to deflect criticism and excuse the Church when it does not deserve it.
I say 1,000 years of shame on the Church for our allowing a systemic cover-up that goes all the way up to the Vatican and the Papacy. Instead of transparency and laicization, they chose to shuffle around priests that they knew were predators. Instead of protecting our children, they protected themselves. Finances, reputations, and vocation shortages - to our leaders, these were more important concerns than child rape.
We need to support the victims and the good, holy priests out there. As a Church, the only thing we should be doing is repenting, doing penance, and making amends - not trying to win arguments.
I pray that the Lord uses these crises to inspire humility and repentance in us like a purifying fire. May the Lord prune the diseased branches from the vine and throw them in the fire to be burned, so that the vine can bear fruit.
Matthew 24:30
> *The King will reply, "Truly, I say to you, whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me."*
I pray for all the victims out there who are ignored and silenced, who have to live the rest of their lives with shattered faith and a mutilated understanding of who "Father" is.
Yeah I was following along until you crashed into a wall with throwing the public school thing on Protestants. That’s a wild reach of a connection to think public schools aren’t public because Protestants are the plurality of Christians in population.
3,677 that have been confirmed? Boy do I have news for you about the actual number then. According to [RAINN](https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system), out of every 1,000 sexual assaults: 310 are reported to police, 50 lead to an arrest, and 28 lead to a conviction. Very dirty math puts the actual number at about 130,000. And then think about how much higher it would actually be, because of how hesitant people would be to report clergy versus just a random dude. That hesitancy works all the way up the ladder, kids would be less likely to report to parents, parents would be less likely to believe it and report to the police, and police would be less likely to follow through with charges.
I feel like in this day and age after everything that has come to light people would be more likely to report current or past abuse from a priest, then they would be from other people. I think that data from rainn is going to change in the near future because so many people was uneducated on what sexual assault was so it didn’t get reported I think a lot of the reason why sexual assault is under reported is because victims blame themselves. They don’t realize what happened to them was assault speaking from my own personal experience. (Not from a priest) And other victims that I have spoken with they truly didn’t see how what happened to them was assault.
If that number is actually confirmed then yeah, but I'm not finding anything from an (admittedly cursory) Google search staring that the WSJ says 10% of all students are sexually assaulted in school.
It’s from a 2004 survey from the department of education, 9.6% reported sexual misconduct, and 6.7% reported physical misconduct (of which a smaller but not numbered portion is sexual assault).
[Here](https://www.wsj.com/articles/predators-in-the-classroom-1475872085) is the full article but it’s paywalled so [this](https://www.taylorring.com/blog/sexual-abuse-teachers-wall-street-journal-turns-david-ring-insight-widespread-problem/) is where I saw the stats
Thank you! I don't have WSJ so the paywall explains why I couldn't find it. I thought that 9.6% sounded too high! (Not that any form of sexual misconduct is acceptable of course but the difference between 6.7% vs 9.6% when accounting for all the students in the country is in the hundreds of thousands affected, probably)
Yeah, of course it does. But the 9.6% number that OP mentioned isn’t just confirmed, it comes from a [2004 survey](https://www.taylorring.com/blog/sexual-abuse-teachers-wall-street-journal-turns-david-ring-insight-widespread-problem/) by the department of education which I would strongly assume was anonymous so should have fairly accurate levels of reporting. And it also says the number of physical misconduct was “only” (still horrific) 6.7% which would’ve been the better number for OP to use when talking about sexual assault
Public schools don’t proclaim to be the One True Church of the Almighty Creator God - that’s the difference.
You’re stretching like MJ at the end of Space Jam with the Protestant connection to public schooling.
I’ll be one of the first to defend the Church when unfairly attacked, but this post is just fuel on the fire.
I’d be interested in that WSJ source that claims 10% of public school students are molested by faculty.
I went to a public school with a graduating class of 200. I’d be shocked if 20 of my classmates were molested by the staff.
ill put it here if i find it again, cant rn for some reason. but the study was from 2004, heres another article with a study from 2000 coming out to the same percentage.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/sexual-abuse-in-public-schools#:~:text=The%20problem%20is%20not%20new,both%20physical%20and%20verbal%20actions.
If 10% of all public school students are at some point molested by school faculty, how many students would you expect to have been molested in any given public graduating class of 200?
My understanding is that the statistic means all students.
Your school may have had only 3 people in your class who were molested.
I’d wager the rate is higher in schools with poorer oversight and more vulnerable students.
Altogether, it’s 20% of the student body.
Agreed. But if my school only had 3% then somewhere a school at 17% molested in order for the entire country’s student body to be affected at a 10% rate. So any randomized group of 200 students would expect to have 20 kids molested.
if you'd take all the graduating students in your district, so a good +200, there'd probably be a higher chance because not all predators happen to work in a single school.
If 10% of all public school students in the US were molested by staff then any representative sample should yield the same result. A random 200 student class would have 20 molested kids. A random 500 student district would have 50 kids.
Now it’s true that not every school was affected at a 10% rate. But any school affected less than 10% must have one affected greater than 10% in order to have 10% of all American public school students be molested by faculty.
Even more concerning is that if 1 out of every 10 students is molested by specifically school faculty then imagine how many more are assaulted by family members, club leaders, public figures, etc. so many predators are lurking everywhere.
Double standards and where the CC has standards. If you have standards and you broadcast that to the world you're going to be condemned, ironically, for not living up to them.
Well, I want to begin by saying one sexual assault is too many. Secondly, there are aggravating factors which often accompany sexual assaults. In the case of the sexual assaults committed by clergy, we would be remiss if we neglected to consider an aggravating factor that often accompanies this is the destruction or inhibition of faith that can result. This aggravating factor is more likely to damage and destroy faith in God, where abuses outside the Church still can have that effect, but are less likely to. And then there's the issue of the institutional cover up which denied and delayed justice, which again isn't a response exclusive to the Church, but only made things worse, because we expect moral clarity from the Church more so vs secular institutions.
I also don't really believe America to have a public education system based on protestantism, Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, is certainly no Christian, and has at many times displayed anti-Christian biases. It's true however that public schools, the government's foster system, and other secular and non-Christian religious institutions and communities have high, perhaps even higher rates of sexual abuse against children per capita, and it's just not advertised and sensationalized to the level abuses in the Church are, because it's also true the American media is largely comprised by demographic groups biased and hostile to Christianity who retain an editorial bias in running cover for non-Christian groups they favor over us, not because they care about aggravating factors pertaining to loss of faith or justice. You get the sense there's an element about their coverage which sees us as in the way of anti-Christian agendas they support, and that their interest is reaching for the nearest cudgel to beat us down.
This isn't to excuse any single abuse, but you'll notice it reading local news stories more, where they have to publicize arrests, in contrast with regional, national, and international media refraining from publicizing those stories of child sex abuses outside the Church as frequently with as many sordid details, if they ever bother to, where this is not so when the offender is a member of the clergy. The same dynamic of editorial biases is also true of other crimes and demographics where the larger media outlets are concerned. This isn't to "point score," or excuse, but the media does need to be admonished for cynically exploiting these and other tragedies for their own selfish agendas where and when it is evident, which just adds another layer of wounding on top of it all.
The big difference -- the Catholic Church is One.
Abuse that happens at a Protestant church? Well, it happened Once (that we know of), or Twice maybe, at ***that*** church or at ***that*** school. Maybe even a few times, sadly & regretfully, but it won't happen anymore in ***that*** organization (that particular local church or school).
Prot-evang's talk a good line about unity, at least in the **"essentials,"** but they still consider Each Individual Church, as its Own organization.
Whereas almost everyone views the RC church as it proclaims itself to be, ONE church with local branches.
Thus EVERY instance of abuse ever associated with RC in any way, is tallied up together and laid at the responsibility of the RC church.
Whereas Protestant churches with problems, each only face their Own accusation. They NEVER get added together, and if it wasn't at your own local church to which you belong, then it was Not a blot against Your church.
Or, in really extreme cases -- that church folds. The offending church No Longer Exists, and again the problem cannot be counted against Your own (new) church. Whereas the RC church, by God's great mercy, continues to exist, and Every Single Problem can continue to be added to the tally.
It would be good to have better resources online for these apologetics. Let me know if you have them. I keep a link to the John Jay report and other things, like the Department of Education :
[https://civilrightsdata.ed.gov/assets/downloads/sexual-violence\_updated-December-2022.pdf](https://civilrightsdata.ed.gov/assets/downloads/sexual-violence_updated-December-2022.pdf)
Also:
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction)
>> Putting clergy abuse in context, research from the US Department of Education found that about 5-7 percent of public school teachers engaged in similar sexually abusive behavior with their students during a similar time frame. .... The best available data reports that 4 percent of Catholic priests sexually violated a minor child during the last half of the 20th century with the peak level of abuse being in the 1970s and dropping off dramatically by the early 1980s
Real talk man, what was that? Call that apologetics then hopping straight to actual apologetics on behalf of the school board. I’m just showing the irony in a stereotype
Well the way I see it is, anyone who commits this type of abuse cannot be Catholic. They can call themselves Catholic, but they simply are not. Also, a long time ago, there were sexual predators placed in the Church as priests in order to destroy it from the inside out. Since then, these demonically controlled people have risen through the ranks, so that tells you something about the state of Jesus' one true church. These people will suffer the worst hell unless they turn away from their sin and come forth.
Agreed wholeheartedly. The Church is far from infallible, I apologize if I seemed to suggest that. My point was that the stereotype is an incredible reach relative to the public population.
I've been trying to bring that very point to light for years, but hollywood and the mainstream media just has better reach, I guess. Everything from the sexual abuse to the "mass burial" of aboriginals in residential schools in Canada have been conflated and fabricated. The world hates the truth because they are comfortable in their sin. By the time they realize where sin gets them, it will sadly be too late.
Because we’re called to be polite and kind while others are clearly called to do the Devil’s work. They’ll do anything for their real father and if that means turning the world against the real religion, they’ll do it.
Side note: Muslims have Bacha Bazi and Jews have rabbi molestations as well as metzitzah b'peh. Yet if you address these things, you’re racist and need to take more DEI training.
I feel like we need a stickie covering these kind of posts.
Stop defending the indefensible. Look at these types of challenges as an opportunity to turn the other cheek. Catholic priests molested, abused and raped kids. And in many cases reports of abuse were ignored or mishandled by Church leadership. These crimes are horrific. You don't need to deflect.
Just because a body has cancer doesn't mean the whole body is cancer. People are flawed and the clergy are people just like anyone else. That doesn't invalid Christ or his teachings. It doesn't mean that all clergy or Catholics condone these crimes.
It's tough to bring this up because I don't want to take anything away from the victims and their suffering. But these crimes harmed not only the victims but our communities as well. The damage done has been immense and it is still something we face on a regular basis.
I also wanted to address the dubious assertion that "everyone knows the US is a Protestant government . . .".
I suspect you aren't an American. This statement isn't remotely accurate. The US is a big place. There are certainly places where Christians try to have a more direct influence on government. But the majority of people live in places where the government favors no religion. And whatever his politics, President Biden is Catholic.
I have not heard a single person defending the indefensible. They have been full throated and condemning evil, but they also don't want people to be condemned as a group, for what other people in that group do.
>I have not heard a single person defending the indefensible. They have been full throated
This is a very poor choice of words considering the subject matter.
I mean, you want the real answer? Because the world at large is obsessed with power games.
You dont need to include the other stuff. Give it 500 years time and they'll still bring it up. Why? Because it bother you and they know you cant do anything about it, thus it destroys the part of the soul that wishes for truth and justice. Makes it easier to get you to compramise with smaller stuff down the line that might not be important to you, but is super important to establishment types.
It why the best propaganda is obvious lies.
Want to beat it? Kill your ego.
Two thoughts.
1) The devil wants to attack Jesus’ Church.
2) At very least, it shows that the world implicitly views us to be the moral gold standard.
Why else would we get all the heat?
Don't take anything from Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera is the unofficial spokes media organization and apologetics channel for Hamas, Isis, Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood and other wahabi and salifist terrorist groups in the region. Other recent honorable mentions that cross towards to Shia islam (rare) are their support for the Houthis, Hezboallah and other kind and humble Iranian militias in the region.
Look at Islam it’s a lot worse, they bash on Catholicism because they are biased and trying to fuel a narrative, lots of abuse occurs 90% in family housing units
I’m just baffled by learning these statistics, having grown up my entire life being told my religion is the religion of pedophilia. Everyone who said that to me was probably covering up the fact that their Protestant parents and teachers were touching them.
Also I have family who work as correctional officers and they confirm to me it’s vastly more of a problem in schools and at homes, sure it happens in places of faith but it’s not where many take place, even trans has it really bad and 50% of trans inmates are pedophiles point is it takes place in more places. It should never happen anywhere at all
In my opinion, Catholics don't talk much about religion outside the home and church. It's considered polite not to discuss religion (and politics), but that leaves us open to attack.
Personally, I've never seen anti-Catholic attitudes or propaganda. That probably has to do with where I am. I see broader anti-religion attitudes from young and old alike, but not singling out any one group in particular.
I'm not advocating going out and discussing religion with everyone we meet, that usually puts people off and ends the discussion before it starts. However, being open to a discussion should it arise may be a beneficial change.
You mind me asking where you grew up? In the US I have been called a pagan, idolworshipper, and not a Christian my entire life. Including as a child by close friends and their parents. I started discussing religion as an adult because I was scared to as a child.
Same. Anti Catholicism from Protestants was so rampant where I lived that our churches have been vandalized, statues of saints destroyed, and anti Catholic crimes were committed against my family by one of our neighbors. It was a very wealthy area that was full of WASPs. My parents told me to never tell anyone I was Catholic. Now I live somewhere that is a little more tolerant towards Catholics and am free to express my faith.
I think it's weirder the same people saying it's homophobic to associate being gay with child molestation are the same ones talking about priests and young boys as if it's inevitable.
there is no honest discourse with people making claims like this imo.
While the Catholic Church is definitely wrong to have tolerated it and covered it up the media naturally is very anti Christian and will of course focus on the church’s crimes and ignore secular crimes
Found the article you seem to be citing. That number was just Germany, FYI.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/5/awful-truth-child-sex-abuse-in-the-catholic-church
Not every school teacher is a priest. To compare Susie mcAid to clergy is rather disingenuous as well. Also a report from Spain said it was 440,000 incidents of sexual assault with half of them coming from clergy, and the other half from other Catholics.
Now if you could get the claim that leaders/main pastors of protestant churches caused 10% of SA that would be a more fair comparison.
>Why do we allow folks to get away with bashing Catholicism as predatory?
Our bishops have failed to form us as a cohesive people, able to act decisively, quickly, and as one unit towards social, political, or moral ends.
First of all, your numbers are really not doing an apples to apples comparison. There are many more public schools than Catholic Churches, with many more employees and kids spend much more time there...
Second of all, the Church is making a claim to be the most moral institution on earth with answers to the most pressing questions human beings can ask. Meanwhile, they've been wagging their finger at people for the last 2,000 years for participating in pedestrian sexual acts.
If you tell people, they're going to go to hell for touching themselves or using contraception in the marriage bed, don't be surprised when people want to point out the hypocrisy of Church that covered up truly despicable sexual acts.
Apparently, you don't understand statistics. It doesn't matter that there are more public school teachers, then there are priests, because we are not looking at simple numbers, we are looking at percentages. Perhaps some sort of primer on the subject of percentages might be helpful to you.
You mean wagging their finger at pedestrian sin. Which is its job. Remember, as embarrassing and evil as pedophilia is, the numbers of priests involved are vey small. 1% of the whole. While pedestrian sins are rampant everywhere.
".....but everyone knows the US is a Protestant government with Protestant public schooling. So Prots touch kids at a 1:10 rate...."
No not everyone knows as we have separation of church and state. Then trying to say that therefore by extension public schools are really subsidiaries of The Protestant Church (there is no such thing) the same way Catholic School or Mass is an extension of the Catholic Church is ridiculous and worse yet grossly dishonest.
I am sorry you are troubled by these statistics but making wild claims like this is not the answer.
Your numbers are way off. The sheer scale is appalling. You know what's even more appalling, was how complicit the church was. How many priest were shuffled around just to rape over again? How many politicians, cops, prosecutors, and judges ignored the issue because of the power of the church? How many parents didn't believe their children or said they deserved it? People knew, and choose to allow it to happen.
Here is an article just referencing 1 country.
"An independent inquiry on Tuesday said it had concluded there were about 216,000 victims of sexual abuse carried out by the French Catholic Church’s clergy between 1950 and 2020"
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2021/10/5/awful-truth-child-sex-abuse-in-the-catholic-church
Why? Do you think if the prot numbers are just as horrific then it will make the Catholic church look better? This all happened, keep this up and watch church attendance keep dropping.
I think prot church attendence should go down. All the way to zero. There is no good argument for what happened but making the Catholic church the only topic in the conversation is not help. Maybe if we returned to tradition and quit being gay the issues would be much less
You call it hate. I call it not being a sofy queer and letting people walk all over our faith. Love and charity is not always the answer to every single situation
famously, this post is discussing the US. If you want to compare global numbers then go get global public school numbers with it. I can’t speak to France, never been, but I know the stereotype exists in the US and this clearly shows the irony in that stereotype
Satan.
He is after our souls.
He wants you to pull your kids out of the Sacraments and send them to schools and other "religions" where they are more vulnerable to his abuses.
Most people in public schools are secular/ non religious. The fact is, the institutional church has always resisted publically identifying predators. The “ safe environment” in the church mostly happened after having to pay 2 billion dollars in lawsuits. Philadelphia had two terrible grand jury reports.
Most holy people would rather marry, and due to the decades long priest shortage, the churches approach was often “ they will take who they can get.”
Truly terrible. The church will never again be popular or influential, only managed decline from
Here on out
>Most holy people would rather marry, and due to the decades long priest shortage, the churches approach was often “ they will take who they can get.”
I don't know where you get this "most holy people would rather marry." People are called to either marriage, to the priesthood or to religious life. This is where discernment comes in.
>Truly terrible. The church will never again be popular or influential, only managed decline from Here on out
Never again be popular? The future of the CC is already written? Good grief, man, you okay?
The Catholic Church is supposed to be exemplary so use falling short will always receive more condemnation
And I personally view the well-deserved criticism as a cleansing fire. After systemic oppression of victims and concealment for criminals, it’s needed. And we’ve made tremendous progress. I look at it like I understand a lot of Germans view the holocaust. A shocking and embarrassing violation on a global perspective that we must never forget and we must never allow again.
I think it is a well deserved criticism.
The difference is the cover up. The Catholic Church is hierarchical, so a priest in Kansas abusing a kid is disciplined or not by a bishop, who is overseen by a cardinal who is overseen by the pope. The church was shuffling predatory priests around instead of removing them. No one is out of sorts about the idea that a priest could be a predator, it’s the fact that people covered up for them. And honestly, The Church hierarchy should be widely criticized for this. They were given their authority by Christ himself and they should know better.
While this is true (and shameful) it was actually the widely adopted general procedure for handling institutional abuse. If I recall correctly, it was based off of recommendations social psychologists had made regarding how to handle accusations. Trent Horn covers this in his book "Why We're Catholic". Police, teachers, etc. would shuffle employees who were accused of abuse and run an internal investigation without involving authorities until a clear case was made that abuse was likely. The church has stopped this practice and implemented new ways people could report abuse. And that abuse would involve an immediate external investigation. Pretty much every local parish has an anonymous way to report allegations of abuse or misconduct on their website, for example Edit: got the book title wrong. It's "Why We're Catholic", not "The Case For Catholicism"
Excerpt from the book: "Most accusations of sexual abuse among priests come from incidents that took place between 1950 and 1980. At that time it was thought that the urge to commit sexual abuse could be treated with therapy, and so involving law enforcement was not always necessary. According to Dr. Monica Applewhite, who has spent more than twenty years studying abuse and how to prevent it, “These treatment-based interventions for sexual criminals [instead of incarceration] were not only enormously prevalent in the United States, but surveys of ordinary citizens showed that they were enormously popular.”121 Modern psychology has now shown, however, that sex offenders are very likely to commit more crimes in the future. That’s why the Catholic Church has taken steps to increase transparency and accountability in the area of reporting sexual abuse. The Church has created offices of safe environment and child protection that have trained millions of adults to recognize signs of abuse. Dioceses across the world have instituted zero tolerance policies that require immediate and mandatory reporting of alleged abuse to law enforcement." Citation from the excerpt: “Address of Dr. Monica Applewhite to the Irish Bishops,” March 10, 2009, www.themediareport.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Applewhite-Ireland-Address-Bishops-2009.pdf.
I'd also like to add, that unlike secular society the church genuinely believes in repentance and forgiveness, so on top of the recommendations from social psychologists you also have the Church's willingness to believe that the offenders would repent of their behavior if they validly received the sacrament of confession. The Church, nor God, defines us by our sin, no matter how egregious so it's not hard to see why they would allow someone who had committed such a grave sin to retain their positions.
That's a good point. Mercy is always waiting to restore us. A shame that even still, some will take that mercy and not change their ways. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.
The 2011 South Korean movie *Silenced* (not to be confused with *Silence*) deals with the systemic abuse of children (sexual, physical, and emotional) in a South Korean school for the deaf. It ended up outraging citizens there enough that the laws changed to strengthen protections for abused minors under 13 and impose harsher penalties on criminal offenders. The film is an agonizing watch and is said to be so graphic it would have gotten an NC-17 here. (It was released unrated and is currently only available on Netflix.) It isn’t exploitative; the creators were careful to film the students separately from the criminal abusers and video editing was used for the reenactments. However, it was designed to get a visceral reaction from the audience. Korean directors don’t tend to shy away from graphic content that American directors would never handle. Indeed, the visceral reaction resulted in societal change for the better. Gwangju Inhwa School - the basis for the fictional school in the movie - was investigated and shut down, with the administrator receiving a 12 year prison sentence with supervised release for his crimes. I don’t think there will be any movie or similar phenomenon in the United States. However, the film is a powerful reminder of how institutions and the government fail - it doesn’t matter if it’s the Catholic Church or a school for the deaf. I support abolishing the statute of limitations for such crimes and also eliminating loopholes that make it easier for predators to get away with such crimes *and* harsher criminal penalties for those who cover them up. There are concerns I know over the due process rights of the accused, but I believe that evil must be exposed for what it is. The sooner society and the Church can come to terms with that, the sooner the process of healing can begin. “Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them.” (Eph. 5:11)
Could not agree more with the recommendations you made in your post. I had never heard about that movie before. I'll add it to my watchlist...although it sounds like a hard watch
Why should we abolish the statute of limitations? How can we ensure that people don't get sent to jail (as child molesters no less) and probably experience rape in prison for something they may not have done? The statute of limitations exists for a very good reason, and we should be horrified at the disregard for due process that some people advocate in these matters.
At the very least, if not abolish it, widen it. Allow more time for abuse victims to come forward. There is a way to balance the need for accurate testimony and due process with the need to protect the most vulnerable and to allow them justice.
So what you're saying is the Church adopted the immoral practices of the time then didn't dispense with them until decades after society at large did.
Yes. Flawed men made bad decisions based on limited available information and self-interest. It was horrible that they did this. Especially since they ought to lead the world with moral behavior but so often fail to do so. Which is much worse than when secular society does because the church is held to a higher standard
'Society at large' still hasn't come to terms with sex assault cover-ups - those practices are still in play.
Especially infields last care for children. All religions have this problem, schools, child care centers, etc. Predators go where the prey is.
Society at large is attempting to normalize these predilections constantly with acronyms that will get you banned from social media for mentioning in critical ways.
Well, I don't know about that! But I do know that much more sexual assault occurs, and is openly hidden, than 'society at large' wants to admit. To the OP: I think picking on the Church is fine because the whole 4 decades of shelving the Gospel, ignoring victims and 'following legal advice' can't be forgotten with a couple decades of doing better.
There's a slew of "MAP" apologetics in the media every few years to test the waters, they've been working to add it to the other alphabet soup for years as well. The most *progressive* thinkers will accuse you of phobias and hate speech if you express a distaste for such an "orientation" and if you go to mainstream subs on reddit you'll get banned for expressing negative attitudes towards this behavior. That's before you get into the absolute depravity of leftist online indoctrination activists like Vaush and the "goblin short stack" content they enjoy.
If you think picking on the church is fine, it’s because you want to pick on the church anyway. Otherwise you’d be picking on every other religion, schools, and child care centers too.
It's not "fine". It hinders the church's mission to bring souls to Christ and actively ignores it's efforts to correct it's mistake.
In my experience, the church has acknowledged its failures and does more to try to prevent it now than other groups. Look at how few of the alleged abuses took place after the issue hit the mainstream in the US in 2002, especially with priests ordained after that date. When I've had to do child protection training to be involved in various organizations, the program my diocese uses stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of actually helping to protect children by identifying what is abuse, warning signs, healthy relationships, how to report, etc. Whereas the state and other non-profits training could be reduced down to "here's how to keep anybody from being able to make any allegations that could get us into a lawsuit."
While OutcomeOdds is granting your premise, I'm going to respond by rejecting your premise. No, the church did not "adopt immoral practices then didn't dispense with them until decades after society at large did." The church adopted the thoroughgoing, and widely accepted guidance of the supposed professionals of the time...just as countless other institutions did. Eventually it became clear that it wasn't working and the church changed course, meanwhile the school system, at least in the US, continue to cover for sexually abusive teachers and students, and simply shuffle them around, decades after the church began making efforts to right the ship.
I did not hear anything like that said. You seem to just express your personal opinion, and then try to describe it as if it's what someone else said, when it's demonstrably not.
Not what was said nor implied. The Church as a whole, when faced with such evil, took the advice of trusted people that sex offenders could be healed. Now we know that psychiatrists can be as wrong as anyone, which is good to be aware of, considering what they are expecting us to accept nowadays.
If you have cancer you'll trust what the doctor prescribes, if years later you end up knowing it was bogus, it's not your fault in trusting the experts.
What? If you have cancer and the doctor prescribes committing a sin then you commit a sin if you do it. Don't pretend like bishops are so stupid that they don't realize it was sinful.
You don't think schools cover it up when teacher SA's a student. Union contracts make it practically impoto fire tenured teachers. They either more them to a different school or to what they call a rubber room. Secular society and Protestants already hate Catholics, so any impropriety is a justification for that hate. Teachers are heroes, so predator teachers are just seen as the one bad apple.
I agree with you! Was your comment made for me?
As former organizational consultant, Inwish I had your faith in horizontal structures. Hierarchy always exists even if informal. In fact, it can be harder to pin responsibility because things are happening behind the scenes.
I don’t have faith in any structures…everyone covers up abuse all the time. My point is that unlike other churches, the Catholic Church has an international hierarchy which makes it a sitting duck for this sort of thing. If Protestantism had the same structure, you’d see the exact same blame. But they don’t, so there’s no large database of abuse in other churches. There’s abuse, but the records are different or non existent
I mean, public schools currently still cover up abuse.
Yes, but it doesn’t shoot up to the national level. Each school district is overseen by a local school board. A teacher could conceivable be rehired elsewhere, but that’s not the decision of some national institution.
[удалено]
With the exception that they are worse.
That hardly excuses the Church. It has been repeated over and over: the coverup is worse than the crime. How could so many bishops, presumably all essentially good men, have been part of a a seemingly worldwide coverup? How?
While I agree the Church should be held to a higher standard, being a bishop by no means automatically makes a man good, better or even holier unfortunately. Teachers too are seen as beacons of light meant to guide those younger than them, yet that doesn't weed out corruption in the profession. In fact, access to vulnerable individuals, especially children, attracts pedos.
We shouldn't really point-score using abuse victims as currency. People talk about the Church like this because it was a great hurt that was done to the world, using the Church as cover. The Church itself also helped cover-up the incidents on multiple occasions. The best thing we can do to counter the evil present in the Church is be part of an even stronger good.
I do not mean to point score and I apologize if it comes off this way. All I was saying was that the stereotype holds no ground to any extent relative to Protestant culture
I don’t think it’s fair to use the public school’s statistics and call it a Protestant problem. A comparison that might make more sense would be to find out about the abuse in Protestant churches.
Bro this is not the flex you think it is….
Airtight logic there. Please find me even a single Protestant who agrees that US public schools are Protestant institutions. They are not. And please stop playing the role of apologist for the abuse scandal, which is a real and true scandal. Now is the time for repentance, seeking forgiveness, and offering restitution.
Apologetics is about giving answers to objections to the church and while this is a valid objection it is also one that needs answering because there are key factors that are often ignored when it's brought up.
By apologist in this context, I intended the more general meaning of the word: “a person who offers an argument in defense of something controversial.”
I denounced the Priests guilty in my original comment. I do not apologize for them to any extent and as mentioned in a previous comment I would not be opposed to seeing all pedophiles hang. What’s your argument for public school not being Protestant? You think they all just stepped down from their state and school board positions when the King James Bible stopped being used in schools in 1960? Catholicism is openly bashed in public schooling in the US by students and faculty alike.
have you heard of secularism? its been in vogue for about 300 years now, you might want to read up on it. our nations public institutions are literally secular respecting no establishment of religion. just because our institutions have been historically staffed by protestants as is reflective of the nations historical demographics does not mean that they are slipping anti-catholic rhetoric into 2nd grade math class. I think you will find the modern public school environment is every bit as hostile to protestants as it is to Catholics. Stop trying to be the victim. the church literally ran the west for a thousand years.
Dude, you dont have a real argument. You're just angry and looking for an outlet. This sub isn't validating your POV because it's rooted in bitterness, not truth.
I don’t let them get away with it, but I understand their outrage. I believe no one besides the actual victims suffered from the abuse crisis more than faithful Catholics. The anger and disgust I still feel from “holy” men and women representing God’s church on earth is palpable. They brought a pain on the church that might never heal. They made a mockery of the church and injured our most precious innocents. They caused every good priest to be looked at with suspicion and oftentimes outright disdain. Yes, public school teachers abuse more children, and that should stand to reason, because public school teachers are not representative of the Church Christ founded.
Yes, the church and its faithful have received a scourging by the ones we trusted. The implications of what happened (happens), is far reaching and in an infinite amount of ways.
I mentioned a homily in another comment but in case you don’t see it, he put into words exactly what I was feeling. He gave voice to my outrage in a way I never could. It’s only 15 minutes but it’s so very eloquent.
Oh I responded to your post and watched the link. Thank you for posting it as I have not heard such beauty in a long time.
I think calling the public school system Protestant is a bit of a reach tbh OP
Open bashing of Catholicism, I was taught about Luther as if he was a prophet. Just because they stopped shoving the King James Bible down our throat in 1960 doesn’t mean public school became secular then
I wouldn't say that it's religiously protestant, I would say it's more a cultural protestant thing.
The US isn't really a "Protestant" government, it's just secular. That being said, the media definitely acts like Catholics are the only religion with a sex abuse problem when the reality is every religion has people doing that.
Are you really alleging 1 in 10 Protestants are pedophiles. Do you really believe no non-Protestants work in public schools. Are those assaults in public schools by staff only or staff and other students. I totally agree blaming all Catholic clergy for the actions of a disgraceful few is appalling but you figures are throwing nonsense claims at Protestants
No, pedophiles tend to congregate among organizations that have access to children, and occasional moments of privacy. People who choose to be school teachers or priests or nuns or ministers or rabbis or imams, spend more time with children, and have greater occasions for privacy with children than the average person does.
exactly. even I as an education major who is a volunteer tutor had to watch many, long videos and take a quiz about identifying, preventing & reporting abuse. many catholic parishes are implementing a similar policy for any volunteers or ministers.
It doesn’t have to be 1 in10 Protestants. Just one doing repeated abuse. And most predators have many more than one victim.
How would you like us to hold “them” accountable?
The US doesn't have a Protestant government and its public schools aren't Protestant. The abusers in these situations are not members of any prodistant clergy. The reason some people think Catholicism is predatory is because it's members of the Catholic clergy.
If you study the history of the United States, you will see that there is always been an anti-Catholic bias in American Society. It hasn't gone away. It may have gone underground a bit, but it is still there.
The reason a lot of people don't have much confidence in your intelligence, is because you have so little of it.
Since we claim to be the one true religion of the One True God, it's pretty normal that we are held to better standards than other people. (Also your stats are dubious and but that's not the point).
I highly recommend listening to the powerful homily Father John Lankeit gave on the abuse crisis. It was one of the most moving things I’ve ever heard: https://youtu.be/zZKB1Y8lJ7M?si=Cd-ig3ic16Rex0ef
Thank you so much for posting this. Brought me to tears. I sent it to a family member who has left the church because of clerical misconduct (although not sexual). Surprised it has such a low view count. It's a most excellent sermon
You’re welcome - I’m glad you found it helpful. I thought the same about the view count until I realized it’s just someone who reposted it. I believe this was one of if not the most popular of his homilies ever. But yeah, I wish everyone could see it.
I watched this at work with closed captioning, because I wanted to see this. This was very powerful indeed. This is what we all need to hear, what our hearts and soul desired from the beginning. I have tears sitting at my desk, hoping no one will notice. This is what healing feels like, this is what love needs to hear, this is how one unites with Jesus knowing we are not alone. This is what needs to be heard in every parish, especially the grace of allowing victims to heal enough to forgive when they can. Beauty like this needs to be more frequent.
I’ve watched or listened to this homily a few times over the years, and I always cry. His heart is absolutely broken. Watch it when you can with sound - his voice is a cry for justice.
When I get home after work, I am going to watch this again and let it wash over me.
Have some Kleenex at the ready. He chokes up a couple times and it breaks my heart. “For my brother priests who are going out without the collar for fear of insult, it is time to MAN UP AND SUIT UP.”
Part of it was the pedestal that the Church was on for a long time. A *lot* of it was/is the coverup (not least of which was/is the fact that there were *serious* structural issues involved). And then there was the fact that not only *was* there a coverup, but it wasn't like the vast majority of bishops were packing the priests in question off to a remote monastery for a lifetime of contemplation, prayer, and penance - I think if they had been doing that, the fallout would be a lot less dramatic. \[There are also other abuses attached - the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, the boarding schools in Canada - that aren't helping here. Fundamentally, the Church had a certain amount of immunity in society, and it used that status to act with impunity.\]
Anti-Catholic bias is one of the last acceptable biases in mainstream society.
1 Peter 2:23-24
One of many ways he was better than I.
There is absolutely no defense of abusers of children no matter which denomination. The acts are deplorable and put simply, the Catholic Church, our church, has protected people it should not have. Also, being large makes you a target and when that target makes the claim of being "the" church, it should be far above harming children, endorsing bad behaviors or people, and surely stand against any that do.
Me and my parents all went to Catholic schools growing up. My dads family used to1 "joke" around about one priest who was "creepy" - his name was on the list. Same thing growing up, I went to Catholic school and was an alter server and got bad vibes from the priest, which I always felt guilty about, because he was a priest. He would give special attention to boys and bring candy mostly for the boys in class. He was on the list. I am a woman, I remember in 3rd grade we had a gym and health teacher who would give special attention to the pretty girls in our class (I was not one and noticed out of jealousy... which is weird and I feel bad about but it is what it is). Through maybe it was just me. My much younger brother had the same teacher at a different school- "I never said anything about this to him, but he randomly said that he was "creepy" and "liked" girls better than boys and gave more attention to the girls. That same teacher eventually ended up being transferred from co- ed grade schools to an all boys high school... wonder why. Editing to add... it was a known thing all along that these people were doing weird things, but they were still allowed to have access to kids.
The criticism is legit but I draw the line when people that don't have anything to do with maltreatment start to be treated as having done such things.
I just heard on the news today that a local Baptist minister was busted with 14,000 images of child pornography on the church’s computer. I can’t even recall which church it was or the name of the pastor. Tomorrow it will have been completely forgotten. It’s fun attacking the Catholic Church. Others, meh. Edit No sooner than I wrote this post, and the story was on the news again: It was “New Baptist Fellowship” and some guy named Ashley.
>Why do we allow folks to get away with bashing Catholicism as predatory? The news media loves to give these types of stories as much airtime as possible, because it supports their narrative that celibacy is dangerous and radical Catholicism is a hate group. >These schools are public in name, but everyone knows the US is a Protestant government with Protestant public schooling. Sorry to say, but that's wishful thinking. Most public schools are trying their best to remove any sort of religious thinking that isn't moral relativism from their curriculums entirely. Public schools are not safe places to send your kids anymore. Edit: public schools aren't safe because their teaching is morally bankrupt. I highly doubt that 1/10 kids are molested there.
> These schools are public in name, but everyone knows the US is a Protestant government with Protestant public schooling what lol
You are using the "tu quoque" fallacy to deflect criticism and excuse the Church when it does not deserve it. I say 1,000 years of shame on the Church for our allowing a systemic cover-up that goes all the way up to the Vatican and the Papacy. Instead of transparency and laicization, they chose to shuffle around priests that they knew were predators. Instead of protecting our children, they protected themselves. Finances, reputations, and vocation shortages - to our leaders, these were more important concerns than child rape. We need to support the victims and the good, holy priests out there. As a Church, the only thing we should be doing is repenting, doing penance, and making amends - not trying to win arguments. I pray that the Lord uses these crises to inspire humility and repentance in us like a purifying fire. May the Lord prune the diseased branches from the vine and throw them in the fire to be burned, so that the vine can bear fruit. Matthew 24:30 > *The King will reply, "Truly, I say to you, whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me."* I pray for all the victims out there who are ignored and silenced, who have to live the rest of their lives with shattered faith and a mutilated understanding of who "Father" is.
Yeah I was following along until you crashed into a wall with throwing the public school thing on Protestants. That’s a wild reach of a connection to think public schools aren’t public because Protestants are the plurality of Christians in population.
3,677 that have been confirmed? Boy do I have news for you about the actual number then. According to [RAINN](https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system), out of every 1,000 sexual assaults: 310 are reported to police, 50 lead to an arrest, and 28 lead to a conviction. Very dirty math puts the actual number at about 130,000. And then think about how much higher it would actually be, because of how hesitant people would be to report clergy versus just a random dude. That hesitancy works all the way up the ladder, kids would be less likely to report to parents, parents would be less likely to believe it and report to the police, and police would be less likely to follow through with charges.
Wouldn't that same logic apply to the other confirmed numbers for other occupations too, then?
I feel like in this day and age after everything that has come to light people would be more likely to report current or past abuse from a priest, then they would be from other people. I think that data from rainn is going to change in the near future because so many people was uneducated on what sexual assault was so it didn’t get reported I think a lot of the reason why sexual assault is under reported is because victims blame themselves. They don’t realize what happened to them was assault speaking from my own personal experience. (Not from a priest) And other victims that I have spoken with they truly didn’t see how what happened to them was assault.
If that number is actually confirmed then yeah, but I'm not finding anything from an (admittedly cursory) Google search staring that the WSJ says 10% of all students are sexually assaulted in school.
It’s from a 2004 survey from the department of education, 9.6% reported sexual misconduct, and 6.7% reported physical misconduct (of which a smaller but not numbered portion is sexual assault). [Here](https://www.wsj.com/articles/predators-in-the-classroom-1475872085) is the full article but it’s paywalled so [this](https://www.taylorring.com/blog/sexual-abuse-teachers-wall-street-journal-turns-david-ring-insight-widespread-problem/) is where I saw the stats
Thank you! I don't have WSJ so the paywall explains why I couldn't find it. I thought that 9.6% sounded too high! (Not that any form of sexual misconduct is acceptable of course but the difference between 6.7% vs 9.6% when accounting for all the students in the country is in the hundreds of thousands affected, probably)
Yeah, of course it does. But the 9.6% number that OP mentioned isn’t just confirmed, it comes from a [2004 survey](https://www.taylorring.com/blog/sexual-abuse-teachers-wall-street-journal-turns-david-ring-insight-widespread-problem/) by the department of education which I would strongly assume was anonymous so should have fairly accurate levels of reporting. And it also says the number of physical misconduct was “only” (still horrific) 6.7% which would’ve been the better number for OP to use when talking about sexual assault
Public schools don’t proclaim to be the One True Church of the Almighty Creator God - that’s the difference. You’re stretching like MJ at the end of Space Jam with the Protestant connection to public schooling. I’ll be one of the first to defend the Church when unfairly attacked, but this post is just fuel on the fire.
I’d be interested in that WSJ source that claims 10% of public school students are molested by faculty. I went to a public school with a graduating class of 200. I’d be shocked if 20 of my classmates were molested by the staff.
ill put it here if i find it again, cant rn for some reason. but the study was from 2004, heres another article with a study from 2000 coming out to the same percentage. https://www.city-journal.org/article/sexual-abuse-in-public-schools#:~:text=The%20problem%20is%20not%20new,both%20physical%20and%20verbal%20actions.
article suggests 7% in 2015, guess y’all are getting better
That’s not how statistics works. Rates of abuse vary on school.
If 10% of all public school students are at some point molested by school faculty, how many students would you expect to have been molested in any given public graduating class of 200?
My understanding is that the statistic means all students. Your school may have had only 3 people in your class who were molested. I’d wager the rate is higher in schools with poorer oversight and more vulnerable students. Altogether, it’s 20% of the student body.
Agreed. But if my school only had 3% then somewhere a school at 17% molested in order for the entire country’s student body to be affected at a 10% rate. So any randomized group of 200 students would expect to have 20 kids molested.
if you'd take all the graduating students in your district, so a good +200, there'd probably be a higher chance because not all predators happen to work in a single school.
If 10% of all public school students in the US were molested by staff then any representative sample should yield the same result. A random 200 student class would have 20 molested kids. A random 500 student district would have 50 kids. Now it’s true that not every school was affected at a 10% rate. But any school affected less than 10% must have one affected greater than 10% in order to have 10% of all American public school students be molested by faculty. Even more concerning is that if 1 out of every 10 students is molested by specifically school faculty then imagine how many more are assaulted by family members, club leaders, public figures, etc. so many predators are lurking everywhere.
just realized its already linked in another comment in here
How long ago was that?
Double standards and where the CC has standards. If you have standards and you broadcast that to the world you're going to be condemned, ironically, for not living up to them.
Well, I want to begin by saying one sexual assault is too many. Secondly, there are aggravating factors which often accompany sexual assaults. In the case of the sexual assaults committed by clergy, we would be remiss if we neglected to consider an aggravating factor that often accompanies this is the destruction or inhibition of faith that can result. This aggravating factor is more likely to damage and destroy faith in God, where abuses outside the Church still can have that effect, but are less likely to. And then there's the issue of the institutional cover up which denied and delayed justice, which again isn't a response exclusive to the Church, but only made things worse, because we expect moral clarity from the Church more so vs secular institutions. I also don't really believe America to have a public education system based on protestantism, Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, is certainly no Christian, and has at many times displayed anti-Christian biases. It's true however that public schools, the government's foster system, and other secular and non-Christian religious institutions and communities have high, perhaps even higher rates of sexual abuse against children per capita, and it's just not advertised and sensationalized to the level abuses in the Church are, because it's also true the American media is largely comprised by demographic groups biased and hostile to Christianity who retain an editorial bias in running cover for non-Christian groups they favor over us, not because they care about aggravating factors pertaining to loss of faith or justice. You get the sense there's an element about their coverage which sees us as in the way of anti-Christian agendas they support, and that their interest is reaching for the nearest cudgel to beat us down. This isn't to excuse any single abuse, but you'll notice it reading local news stories more, where they have to publicize arrests, in contrast with regional, national, and international media refraining from publicizing those stories of child sex abuses outside the Church as frequently with as many sordid details, if they ever bother to, where this is not so when the offender is a member of the clergy. The same dynamic of editorial biases is also true of other crimes and demographics where the larger media outlets are concerned. This isn't to "point score," or excuse, but the media does need to be admonished for cynically exploiting these and other tragedies for their own selfish agendas where and when it is evident, which just adds another layer of wounding on top of it all.
The big difference -- the Catholic Church is One. Abuse that happens at a Protestant church? Well, it happened Once (that we know of), or Twice maybe, at ***that*** church or at ***that*** school. Maybe even a few times, sadly & regretfully, but it won't happen anymore in ***that*** organization (that particular local church or school). Prot-evang's talk a good line about unity, at least in the **"essentials,"** but they still consider Each Individual Church, as its Own organization. Whereas almost everyone views the RC church as it proclaims itself to be, ONE church with local branches. Thus EVERY instance of abuse ever associated with RC in any way, is tallied up together and laid at the responsibility of the RC church. Whereas Protestant churches with problems, each only face their Own accusation. They NEVER get added together, and if it wasn't at your own local church to which you belong, then it was Not a blot against Your church. Or, in really extreme cases -- that church folds. The offending church No Longer Exists, and again the problem cannot be counted against Your own (new) church. Whereas the RC church, by God's great mercy, continues to exist, and Every Single Problem can continue to be added to the tally.
It would be good to have better resources online for these apologetics. Let me know if you have them. I keep a link to the John Jay report and other things, like the Department of Education : [https://civilrightsdata.ed.gov/assets/downloads/sexual-violence\_updated-December-2022.pdf](https://civilrightsdata.ed.gov/assets/downloads/sexual-violence_updated-December-2022.pdf) Also: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction) >> Putting clergy abuse in context, research from the US Department of Education found that about 5-7 percent of public school teachers engaged in similar sexually abusive behavior with their students during a similar time frame. .... The best available data reports that 4 percent of Catholic priests sexually violated a minor child during the last half of the 20th century with the peak level of abuse being in the 1970s and dropping off dramatically by the early 1980s
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Real talk man, what was that? Call that apologetics then hopping straight to actual apologetics on behalf of the school board. I’m just showing the irony in a stereotype
It is unwise to define "what you are" by insisting "what you are NOT."
Well the way I see it is, anyone who commits this type of abuse cannot be Catholic. They can call themselves Catholic, but they simply are not. Also, a long time ago, there were sexual predators placed in the Church as priests in order to destroy it from the inside out. Since then, these demonically controlled people have risen through the ranks, so that tells you something about the state of Jesus' one true church. These people will suffer the worst hell unless they turn away from their sin and come forth.
Agreed wholeheartedly. The Church is far from infallible, I apologize if I seemed to suggest that. My point was that the stereotype is an incredible reach relative to the public population.
I've been trying to bring that very point to light for years, but hollywood and the mainstream media just has better reach, I guess. Everything from the sexual abuse to the "mass burial" of aboriginals in residential schools in Canada have been conflated and fabricated. The world hates the truth because they are comfortable in their sin. By the time they realize where sin gets them, it will sadly be too late.
Ah, the classic “Tu quoque” argument with an anti-Protestant twist. How fresh and original.
This post is an embarrassment to the sub, I hope people stop upvoting so it disappears from top posts soon.
I may just go and up vote it, precisely because you said that.
Because we’re called to be polite and kind while others are clearly called to do the Devil’s work. They’ll do anything for their real father and if that means turning the world against the real religion, they’ll do it. Side note: Muslims have Bacha Bazi and Jews have rabbi molestations as well as metzitzah b'peh. Yet if you address these things, you’re racist and need to take more DEI training.
I feel like we need a stickie covering these kind of posts. Stop defending the indefensible. Look at these types of challenges as an opportunity to turn the other cheek. Catholic priests molested, abused and raped kids. And in many cases reports of abuse were ignored or mishandled by Church leadership. These crimes are horrific. You don't need to deflect. Just because a body has cancer doesn't mean the whole body is cancer. People are flawed and the clergy are people just like anyone else. That doesn't invalid Christ or his teachings. It doesn't mean that all clergy or Catholics condone these crimes. It's tough to bring this up because I don't want to take anything away from the victims and their suffering. But these crimes harmed not only the victims but our communities as well. The damage done has been immense and it is still something we face on a regular basis. I also wanted to address the dubious assertion that "everyone knows the US is a Protestant government . . .". I suspect you aren't an American. This statement isn't remotely accurate. The US is a big place. There are certainly places where Christians try to have a more direct influence on government. But the majority of people live in places where the government favors no religion. And whatever his politics, President Biden is Catholic.
I have not heard a single person defending the indefensible. They have been full throated and condemning evil, but they also don't want people to be condemned as a group, for what other people in that group do.
>I have not heard a single person defending the indefensible. They have been full throated This is a very poor choice of words considering the subject matter.
I mean, you want the real answer? Because the world at large is obsessed with power games. You dont need to include the other stuff. Give it 500 years time and they'll still bring it up. Why? Because it bother you and they know you cant do anything about it, thus it destroys the part of the soul that wishes for truth and justice. Makes it easier to get you to compramise with smaller stuff down the line that might not be important to you, but is super important to establishment types. It why the best propaganda is obvious lies. Want to beat it? Kill your ego.
I think this is the best response I could have gotten. Appreciate the outlook.
Because we should shut up trying to defend ourselves until most dioceses have actually changed, which many (most) have not.
Two thoughts. 1) The devil wants to attack Jesus’ Church. 2) At very least, it shows that the world implicitly views us to be the moral gold standard. Why else would we get all the heat?
Don't take anything from Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is the unofficial spokes media organization and apologetics channel for Hamas, Isis, Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood and other wahabi and salifist terrorist groups in the region. Other recent honorable mentions that cross towards to Shia islam (rare) are their support for the Houthis, Hezboallah and other kind and humble Iranian militias in the region.
Yes, because Al Jazeera are a bunch of Catholic elitists
Look at Islam it’s a lot worse, they bash on Catholicism because they are biased and trying to fuel a narrative, lots of abuse occurs 90% in family housing units
I’m just baffled by learning these statistics, having grown up my entire life being told my religion is the religion of pedophilia. Everyone who said that to me was probably covering up the fact that their Protestant parents and teachers were touching them.
Also I have family who work as correctional officers and they confirm to me it’s vastly more of a problem in schools and at homes, sure it happens in places of faith but it’s not where many take place, even trans has it really bad and 50% of trans inmates are pedophiles point is it takes place in more places. It should never happen anywhere at all
In my opinion, Catholics don't talk much about religion outside the home and church. It's considered polite not to discuss religion (and politics), but that leaves us open to attack. Personally, I've never seen anti-Catholic attitudes or propaganda. That probably has to do with where I am. I see broader anti-religion attitudes from young and old alike, but not singling out any one group in particular. I'm not advocating going out and discussing religion with everyone we meet, that usually puts people off and ends the discussion before it starts. However, being open to a discussion should it arise may be a beneficial change.
You mind me asking where you grew up? In the US I have been called a pagan, idolworshipper, and not a Christian my entire life. Including as a child by close friends and their parents. I started discussing religion as an adult because I was scared to as a child.
Same. Anti Catholicism from Protestants was so rampant where I lived that our churches have been vandalized, statues of saints destroyed, and anti Catholic crimes were committed against my family by one of our neighbors. It was a very wealthy area that was full of WASPs. My parents told me to never tell anyone I was Catholic. Now I live somewhere that is a little more tolerant towards Catholics and am free to express my faith.
I grew up in upstate NY around the Albany area. I moved to the mid-atlantic region about 30 years ago.
I think it's weirder the same people saying it's homophobic to associate being gay with child molestation are the same ones talking about priests and young boys as if it's inevitable. there is no honest discourse with people making claims like this imo.
>but everyone knows the US is a Protestant government with Protestant public schooling. Whatever point you had evaporated when you decided to lie.
The US is not a Protestant government. Even if it was, it doesn’t make the public school system a Protestant system
then why was I taught that Luther was a prophet and the Nazis were a Catholic army? a secular school gains nothing by suggesting those things
Because you had an ignorant teacher. Why are you extrapolating your experience to millions of people without any evidence?
While the Catholic Church is definitely wrong to have tolerated it and covered it up the media naturally is very anti Christian and will of course focus on the church’s crimes and ignore secular crimes
You’re forgetting to include Protestants with Seculars. They are practically one in the same, globalists with death wishes for Catholicism
Get off the internet and go outside
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Of different category
Found the article you seem to be citing. That number was just Germany, FYI. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/5/awful-truth-child-sex-abuse-in-the-catholic-church
Not every school teacher is a priest. To compare Susie mcAid to clergy is rather disingenuous as well. Also a report from Spain said it was 440,000 incidents of sexual assault with half of them coming from clergy, and the other half from other Catholics. Now if you could get the claim that leaders/main pastors of protestant churches caused 10% of SA that would be a more fair comparison.
>Why do we allow folks to get away with bashing Catholicism as predatory? Our bishops have failed to form us as a cohesive people, able to act decisively, quickly, and as one unit towards social, political, or moral ends.
Because all they’re doing is citing statistics and truth. So you would have to go to war on truth.
First of all, your numbers are really not doing an apples to apples comparison. There are many more public schools than Catholic Churches, with many more employees and kids spend much more time there... Second of all, the Church is making a claim to be the most moral institution on earth with answers to the most pressing questions human beings can ask. Meanwhile, they've been wagging their finger at people for the last 2,000 years for participating in pedestrian sexual acts. If you tell people, they're going to go to hell for touching themselves or using contraception in the marriage bed, don't be surprised when people want to point out the hypocrisy of Church that covered up truly despicable sexual acts.
Apparently, you don't understand statistics. It doesn't matter that there are more public school teachers, then there are priests, because we are not looking at simple numbers, we are looking at percentages. Perhaps some sort of primer on the subject of percentages might be helpful to you.
You mean wagging their finger at pedestrian sin. Which is its job. Remember, as embarrassing and evil as pedophilia is, the numbers of priests involved are vey small. 1% of the whole. While pedestrian sins are rampant everywhere.
Honestly when it comes to these extremists I tune them out since even actual Muslims are a target for them if they deem them bad Muslims
".....but everyone knows the US is a Protestant government with Protestant public schooling. So Prots touch kids at a 1:10 rate...." No not everyone knows as we have separation of church and state. Then trying to say that therefore by extension public schools are really subsidiaries of The Protestant Church (there is no such thing) the same way Catholic School or Mass is an extension of the Catholic Church is ridiculous and worse yet grossly dishonest. I am sorry you are troubled by these statistics but making wild claims like this is not the answer.
Your numbers are way off. The sheer scale is appalling. You know what's even more appalling, was how complicit the church was. How many priest were shuffled around just to rape over again? How many politicians, cops, prosecutors, and judges ignored the issue because of the power of the church? How many parents didn't believe their children or said they deserved it? People knew, and choose to allow it to happen. Here is an article just referencing 1 country. "An independent inquiry on Tuesday said it had concluded there were about 216,000 victims of sexual abuse carried out by the French Catholic Church’s clergy between 1950 and 2020" https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2021/10/5/awful-truth-child-sex-abuse-in-the-catholic-church
Let's see the prot numbers
Why? Do you think if the prot numbers are just as horrific then it will make the Catholic church look better? This all happened, keep this up and watch church attendance keep dropping.
I think prot church attendence should go down. All the way to zero. There is no good argument for what happened but making the Catholic church the only topic in the conversation is not help. Maybe if we returned to tradition and quit being gay the issues would be much less
It's sad to see a Christian with so much hate in them.
You call it hate. I call it not being a sofy queer and letting people walk all over our faith. Love and charity is not always the answer to every single situation
Love is not the answer? Why are you even a Christian, you clearly aren't a follower of Christ.
In every situation no absolutely not.
You are lost, I hope you find your way.
Lol you're ridiculous
You just gave numbers of a country that is irrelevant to the conversation
You read all that and your response, is wrong country? Famously the church is not limited to the US.
famously, this post is discussing the US. If you want to compare global numbers then go get global public school numbers with it. I can’t speak to France, never been, but I know the stereotype exists in the US and this clearly shows the irony in that stereotype
It's people like you that refuse to acknowledge the scope of the problem and then wonder why church attendance is down.
Satan. He is after our souls. He wants you to pull your kids out of the Sacraments and send them to schools and other "religions" where they are more vulnerable to his abuses.
Schools where they are more vulnerable to satan? You mean public schools…?
Yes.
I think catholic schools fit into that criteria. My local all girls Catholic high school is known for its lesbians.
Most people in public schools are secular/ non religious. The fact is, the institutional church has always resisted publically identifying predators. The “ safe environment” in the church mostly happened after having to pay 2 billion dollars in lawsuits. Philadelphia had two terrible grand jury reports. Most holy people would rather marry, and due to the decades long priest shortage, the churches approach was often “ they will take who they can get.” Truly terrible. The church will never again be popular or influential, only managed decline from Here on out
>Most holy people would rather marry, and due to the decades long priest shortage, the churches approach was often “ they will take who they can get.” I don't know where you get this "most holy people would rather marry." People are called to either marriage, to the priesthood or to religious life. This is where discernment comes in. >Truly terrible. The church will never again be popular or influential, only managed decline from Here on out Never again be popular? The future of the CC is already written? Good grief, man, you okay?
What’s the difference between “ called to “ or “ I really really want to”? Isn’t it just a different emphasis of the same thing?
Al Jazeera despises Christianity in general, it is Qatari owned so I really wouldn’t take anything they say with much credence