Reply to Lifelong Catholic, thinking of leaving church -- how to deal with moving children to new faith?

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "Lifelong Catholic, thinking of leaving church -- how to deal with moving children to new faith? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You do understand that the stats on priest abuse are very similar to abuse in leadership in other faiths? It isn't just a "Catholic" issue.  It is a human issue.[/quote]

Where is this happening in other faiths? I grew up in Catholic school, but I am protestant. There isn't much difference in the two religions except that Catholic priests seem to have much more contact with young boys because of altar boys (the boys in my super conservative MoCo parish used to brag that the cool, young priest used to show them porno mags. I shutter now to think of what else happened to them), first communion and confession. It's such an easy breeding ground for abuse. We didn't have these things in the protestant church, they were more community centered vs. priest/child centered. [/quote]

This is not to excuse the catholic church, which probably dwarfs others in the magnitude, impact and brazenness of the abuse, but the New Yorker ran an article about 10 years ago documenting this in ultra-orthodox Jewish communities. I mentioned it to a Muslim friend and he said it happens in Muslim communities too. There was a case in a Protestant church in NoVA that was in the papers a few years ago that I remember pretty vividly.

Basically, if you put people in positions of unquestioned authority, it's only a matter of time before the positions attract would be abusers.[/quote]

^^^I had a flashback to an extracurricular activity I was running a few years ago for my kids and a bunch of others. The coaches had this newsgroup where everyone shared info. One day, some unknown person posted on the newsgroup that they were looking for a group to volunteer with because they "loved working with children and had done it in the past at their church." They also added that they had zero experience in the skillset needed to run this activity. For some reason, the person's professed lack of knowledge and experience, their unabashed enthusiasm for "volunteering" with children and the church mention really set off my alarm bells as a parent and I never forgot that post. I've always wondered if that was a catholic church or some other denomination.

The following year, the national organization that sponsors the activity started mandating strenuous background checks for coaches as well as the obligation for each team to have two coaches or a coach and another cleared adult present at all times with the children. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics