Maybe the catholic church should sell some of its assets

nonsense, the vast majority go to jail because most victims the make complaints take it to the law and call the cops..

its like !@#$% and others mentioned, there are pedophiles hiding in all ranks and walks, it is just a bit more horrific when they are priests, especially manipulating sacred office like confession and the communion :(



I never said you said such a thing. I was pointing out that ANY PRIEST WHO IS HAVING SEX WITH CHILDREN IS BY DEFINITION NO LONGER CELIBATE. Celibates DO NOT HAVE SEX, which children or adults or otherwise. So it is wrong and slanderous to other celibate priests who are normal folks to even remotely associate celibacy with the sexual conduct by these pedophiles, because that is fallacious, they are no celibates in the first place. They are child molesters and there is clearly a world of difference..

This is all old news for LA, former Cardinal Roger Mahony settled over $600 million for accusations back in 2005. Frankly I am surprised that folks are getting this so late in the game, I thought we already had this lampooning years ago?

My wife and I were both raised as Catholics.

Talking to a friend (who obviously doesn't know us very well) recently, she asked if our children are catholics. In unison and with more than a hint of panic and disgust we both shouted: NO!

Pushing religion on children is a form of child abuse anyway but catholicism takes it to another level.

perhaps some catholic curricula are a bit over zealous, but as a Youth Minister I must admit to taking a bit of offense at that. Kids are more inherently religious than ANY adults I have ever met, and many THRIVE with independent thought and personal growth in a religious education. Kids BEG me to teach them religion, and we have a blast.

Not sure what you mean by this. Susceptible? I know my daughter loves religious stories: from Adam and Eve to Zeus. But she also loves stories about unicorns and talking bees.

i remember a thought after being dragged to mess as a child

is god watching me poo? does he get off from that?

and then i played god with my dolls.

not susceptible, more like authentic, sincere, genuine, insightful, self-actualized and self-aware. It is all the adults who are full of bitter guile and boredom. Kids are NATURALLY religious (ie, seeking religion/spirituality) it is all the adults who are blinded by the drama and cultural baggage..

true, I thought unicorns could be real. I wanted them to be real.

I think you're mistaking self awareness with innocence and also over simplifying.

Children's minds are not "authentic, sincere, genuine, insightful etc", they are under developed. Perfect time to instil ancient myths which have NO basis in fact in their susceptible minds.

That's why children believe in unicorns and fairytales. The only difference between religious stories and other fairy tales is that at some point a child will realise the non religious fairy tales are just that.

My children are lucky that they are growing up in a place where religion is not totally pervasive. And my daughter is already working out the bullshit.

And for that I am grateful. I don't want her fantastic, bright, joyful mind cluttered up with bullshit. Child abuse:mad:.

Nobody can prove they don't exist.

bet someone on here will give it a good try though.

you need to catch up on some Joseph Campbell to get a better understanding of the true purpose of myth/religion in culture, you have quite a misunderstanding. The historicity of myth is irrelevant in fact, to the overall purpose of transmitting culture through the active experience of myth. For children and adults alike mythology and religion are not events in the history book, they are active in the third-eye imagination of the present, helping to guide, explain and give purpose and meaning to present and future. Myth provides identity, significance, and meaning to many things, and by the way, in very positive psychological and sociological ways. Myth is not merely a control mechanism of various authorities, myth dwells in the believer not the deceiver, and in the life and mind of the believer it is not the historicity, but the substance. Catch up back on your Campbell, you will get blown away and never look at religion the same. It is not about dogmatism, it is about awareness.




By the way the age group I am referring to is around 8-13, who are most definitily children (just talk to them and see) and yet by no means believe in fairies and magic...

but this is for another thread entirely.

by the way, do you also let your kids be cluttered up with a bunch of corporate brain washing commercialism/materialistic bullshit as well? Or do you just throw out the only pedagogy with some cultural substance and leave the superficial bullshit to clutter away ;)

all you have to do is lock them up with no tv and no access to other children
except their cousins and half-brothers/sisters
also locked in the basement

I've studied the area in depth. At college as well as studying Psychology I took a separate course in Child Psychology, as well as Sociology, Philosophy, History and Religious Studies (there, you made me look like a twat). I've also had an interest in religion and mythology (as well as American history and politics - my degree is in American History) and in particular evolutionary biology and most recently the connection between human evolution and religion.

I'm not trying to sound like a twat. I just thought I'd get the "you don't know what you're talking about" childishness out of the way. I may not agree with you but it's a subject I probably know enough about to have a valid opinion about.

I'll be getting some Joseph Campbell books from the library. Thanks for the recs.

I have to say, as someone who's sympathetic to religion, that I entirely agree that it's more often massively dangerous to orient children, pre-rational reflection (I think that starts developing around 8-10, which I'm sure you'll correct me on) towards religion, especially religions whose little-d dogma (culturo-religious edicts, perhaps) is sprawling and ill-defined.

The only point I'd make is that I do see a difference to the religious 'myth', in its broadest sense, and fairy tales, ghost stories and so on. The equivocation is a fair one, but in terms of the status of religion, it purports to be a myth within society, rather than without - religious myth is transcendent and tied in with the social, while fairy tales are allegorical, fantastical narratives. Obviously, the equivocation on your part is fair, given I'd assume you'd still equivocate them at the point of the 'fantastical'. The problem is that the equivocation on the basis of the lack of historical 'fact' to any myth-system threatens to undermine the meaningful (and largely allegorical) function of fairy tales and religion in favour of a dry rationality that doesn't really square with the absence of an immanent rationality accessible to each person in a given society.

Darn you. I was going to edit my post for reasons stated in my pm.

I agree with you and it is unfair to compare mythology with fairy tales. Or rather it isn't so much unfair than in need of a more (a lot more) fuller explanation.

In a similar way during a discussion with phoenix I compared the superstition of tarot with other superstitions (eg having to turn around and touch your toes before leaving the house). Sounds like a ridiculous comparison but less so than you would think.

Yadda yadda.

Have you ever read Feyerabend's 'Farewell to Reason'? I think you'd like it. He comes from the philosophy of science angle and ends up defending (exalting, even) Voodoo. He was mis-used by Cardinal Ratzinger as a defender of the Church's involvement in 'the Copernican revolution', comically.

I just wrote a shed load of insightful and at times hilarious remarks in response to this but pressed a button and lost the lot:(.

I'll be fucked if I'm going to write it again.

I haven't read it but if I can find time in between the four volumes of that Campbell bloke's stuff I'll give it a squizz.

Pookie, I like your studies.

actually, most Priests that are accussed of sexual abuse of whoever do NOT even go to trial. they are kept safe by the church who then "rehabs" them by making them pray for a while, and then they send them off to another parish, ussually some small town, where no one has heard of his crimes.

they do NOT go to jail.

tell her: kid, i love you, your mother loves you, BUT YOU ARE GOING TO HELL!!!!

also, glice, one of your posts was too convoluted fo me to make 100% sense of it, but were you implying that without religion we'd had only dry reason and have no poetry, no metaphor, no story, no dreams? if so, that's clearly a fallacy-- it's the other way around. we just need to keep sure we retain metaphors and metaphors and don't literalize (spelling, there? not sure-- or semantics for that matter-- "literalize"--- whatever, this is only my part-time language).

anyway, pookie, campbell is best in the bill moyers videos which should be available in the yookay. his serious writing is a bit dated, as he was an old school jungian and his students @ sarah lawrence called him an old fascist. but he's highly entertaining and interesting on teevee.

anyway, speaking of jungian notions, don't discount fairy tales as lesser than religious myths-- they are often interchangeable and even more useful, psychologically speaking.

i find the greek fairytales far more entertaining than the myth if the crucified jewish wonderboy (who is really pagan in origin). the greeks had healthier minds, i think, than the 2000 years of christianity that followed.

I dig the more existential-angsty bits of the bible, like the "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" on the cross. Powerful stuff. The following part about the resurrection kind of kills it, though.

but what can the church do if you choose to persecute them criminally?

are people saying they expect the church to take care of that too?

I might try youtubing him before I commit my VALUABLE time to reading a whole book. I'm not a reading machine after all.Agreed.Having children adds a new perspective to religious belief. The wishful thinking of an afterlife is easier to go along with if you're talking about somebody you love more than anything.

None of the above, but I've given up on this point with you. You've made your situation quite clear, I disagree with it, and that's all good in the hood with me. I'm not saying this to be a cunt (for this one time only), I just really think yours and my understanding of the world is incommensurable on this matter.

I was just reasoning with some i-dren about this, remember the prominence of sexual pederasty in Greco-Roman culture and society would be similarly appalling in our society today and in many circumstances very much parallels this situation with the Catholic Church.. after all, the Roman Church is the direct preservation and partial resuscitation of the old Roman Empire.. perhaps the Roman Church is practicing criminal anachronisms?

I wonder how much Roman pederasty has been in the Church?

I remember loling about some sidestepping Plato made about pedagogy and pederasty. I can't remember which dialogue. Symposium, maybe?

Certainly, though, the parallels don't justify molestation and rape.

agreed, I'm not into Foucalt, I believe pederasty to be as much a crime as it is today, however I was commenting on what might be an obvious Roman connection. I don't buy into the whole cultural relevancy argument when it comes to actions with appear to be harmful and abusive irregardless to culture or geography :(

what is happening in the Church is shameful, whats equally unfortunate is that it goes on in schools, protestant churches, and of course families, no institution seems to be spared.

Frank Costello: Good day, father.
Older Priest: Good day, Francis.
Frank Costello: You recall our chat? Little boys. Sucking on their peckers, etc... and so forth. I am as God made me. Is that your rationale? May I remind you - in this archdiocese, God don't run the bingo.
Young Priest: May I remind you - that pride comes before the fall.
Frank Costello: How's Sister Mary Teresa doing? Had a tasty relationship before she took her vows.
[Costello hands the priests a nude drawing of the nun]
Frank Costello: Enjoy your clams, cocksuckers.

actually i think your context-free posting of a piece of pottery just proved my point about mental health. while men-boy relations in ancient greece were socially sanctioned, supervised by parents, voluntarilty entered, and devoid of shame, besides including a mentoring/educational relationship, today's morality keeps the same attractions in the deep dark cavern of shameful rape ad molestation, churning pathologies.

a caveat, though---in ancient times one became a man much earlier than today, the jews have traditionally 13, for romans it was 15 or 16, can't recall, and not sure about the greeks, so you could say this was not a "boy" as we understand today, it was a younger man with an older man, whereas american childhoods are protracted until one's early 20s, sometimes even later, and a 13 year old is a fucking immature baby. back in the day women married at 12, started having children, right away, the life cycle was lots shorter, but i do think people were saner, though not by any means saints.

sainthood, by the way-- don't get me started on that bizarre concept. only the diseased complement of sin, hell, eternal damnation, and the life of billions crippled by perpetual shame.

i was only parodying the kind of mental abuse that is dished out in the name of religious education(s), but about what you say-- yes, though i can only imagine.

wasn't that phaedrus, where socrates takes his favorite boy out of the city walls and they sit around under some kind of shady tree and talk about love, phaedrus tries to seduce the old man, and socrates promotes chaste love over fucking?

i also remember, somewhere, that alcibiades is pissed off at socrates cuz they lied together and socrates refused to fuck him-- he "behaved like his father" or some such thing.

I hate these motherfucking faggots. Reinstate the death penalty and string these motherfuckers up, I say.

xx

I know you were. I just had an attack of seriousitis.

My dad (a catholic) pressurised my sister into getting her children christened because otherwise they would go to hell if they died (or limbo or whatever) and tried to do the same with us.

As head of the church that sanctions this kind of child abuse I'm going to look into having the pope arrested when he comes to the UK.

We can agree fully on this matter. The home is one of the most dangerous places for a child in some cases. These so called priests are making a mockery of God, and should be punished as any other citizen would in the same circumstance.