But this one’s not:
The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops will make an important decision this week: Do they want to defend the church’s legitimate interest in religious autonomy, or do they want to wage an election-year war against President Obama?
And do the most conservative bishops want to junk the Roman Catholic Church as we have known it, with its deep commitment to both life and social justice, and turn it into the Tea Party at prayer?
Yes, they do. SATSQ.
I’ve been a bit surprised, in general, that many of you have so much sympathy for those non-crazy Catholics who continue to support what is 60% an international right-wing boy-rape conspiracy but wring their hands over the possibility that it will become 100% an international right-wing boy-rape conspiracy, while having so little sympathy for those non-crazy libertarians who work for think thanks that are 60% glibertarian Koch-whore chop shops but wring their hands over the possibility that the think tanks will become 100% glibertarian Koch-whore chop shops.
What’s the difference? Please explain.
Citizen Alan
Well personally, I have equal contempt for Libertarianism and Catholicism. They’re both idiotic cults ruled by insane dogmas that are utterly divorced from reality.
PIGL
One obvious difference is that the glibertarian Koch-whores, no matter how ill-intentioned, are not raping or otherwise molesting any boys…as so-far discovered. They simply avidly, and with considerable sucess, pursue the emiseration of billions.
Spaghetti Lee
Same way one can love his country but hate its current government.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Spaghetti Lee:
Yes, but why is one group that does it beneath contempt, while the other one deserves our respect?
dollared
Dude, get some sleep. I have your explanation for you. I talked today to a woman who went to Catholic schools here in Seattle. Her daughter and her nieces and nephews all go to the same Catholic elementary school, which is a wonderful life. She knows what sort of training her kids will get, she will be surrounded by her family, and it continues a 100 year tradition in Seattle, a newish city, for her family.
The bishops come and go. The people and the honest priests just labor away, giving continuity and certainty to people’s lives.
But I can’t stand it. So my family has no community and no clear direction and structure to the kids’ training. Which is better?
David Koch
I really scared of a bunch of cross-dressers.
Arclite
That’s quite a sentence. If you could distill it into two lines, you’d have an instant classic.
Spaghetti Lee
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
Well, you can feel the way you want to feel about the Catholic Church-I personally can’t recall having demanded that anyone feel one way or the other about it. For the ‘non-insane’ people who have stuck around, I’d say people are religious for many different reasons, be they for a personal sense of well-being, a sense of community, or whatever, in ways that are meaningful to people outside of a political context, and that they don’t want to give up just because of what’s happening politically. In contrast, if you’ve made the choices over the course of many years that have led to you working at Cato or a similar place, there’s much less doubt as to why you’re there-to promote a very specific and rigid ideology according to a certain set of rules, and you’re getting paid to do it. You’re not there for personal comfort or for your family.
There’s been a lot of bile directed at Catholics here over the past few months, and I’m sure some of it is deserved, but I can’t help recalling that distinct majorities of Catholics voted for Obama, support his position on the birth control mess, a huge majority of Catholic women have actually used birth control, and so on. And many Catholic/ex-Catholic commenters here have also pointed out in response that Catholic laypeople doing their own thing and not really listening to the bishops is a grand old tradition, and that the Catholic Church’s institutional foray into the swamp of right-wing politics is only a generation or two old. Basically, what I’m saying is, there’s a lot of ways in which someone can still feel sympathetic to the Catholicism and not approve of the way its current leaders are handling things, because there’s a lot of different ways to be Catholic (or any religion), and a lot of different things one can get out of it. I don’t think a comparison between that and a highly ideological job that you basically have to work to achieve is really valid-the two things are too dissimilar.
Martin
One does legitimate good deeds that match the values they promote. The other does not. Yeah, the church has more than its fair share of failings and hypocrites, but that’s all that libertarianism has ever produced – I can’t name a single good deed or even a particularly noble value that they promote. If the Kochs were bankrolling the ACLU, I might have more sympathy for them, but they can’t even do that much.
Citizen Alan
The thing for me is that I simply don’t understand Catholic women, just as I don’t understand Jews for Jesus, the Log Cabin Republicans, or Michael Steele. I simply do not understand what is going on in the head of someone who has committed one’s self mind, body and soul to an institution which, as a basic principle, considers one to be at best fundamentally deficient and at worst sub-human.
David Koch
In a way they’re more republican than right wing, as they always give socially liberal republicans a pass on issues they supposedly care about.
They always make a big deal if there is a Democrat is pro choice, but never say a peep if a Republican is pro choice.
For example, in NYC, Cardinal O’Connor always would create a scene over Mario Cuomo being pro choice, even though Cuomo was against capitol punishment because he was Catholic and even though Cuomo was a loyal family man, yet O’Connor always used give pro choice, pro death penalty, pro adultery, pro divorce Giuliani a reach around.
Now they’re screaming about contraception coverage in Obamacare, but they gave Romney a pass for doing the very same thing in Romneycare.
The pattern is clear. Time, and time again, they invoke policy disagreement in order to club Democrats in election years and grants republicans a complete pardon on the very same positions.
Q.Q. Moar
@Citizen Alan:
Tell me about it. My mom and my sister converted to Mormonism. I never asked them why; I’d guess it has more to do with believing that Native Americans are the lost tribes of Israel than thinking that Southern Baptists were treating them too well.
Spaghetti Lee
@Martin:
I’d say this is what I’m trying to say. If we’re comparing the two at their best, I’ll take Romero, Walesa, and Kennedy over Koch, Rand, and Mises any day.
hhex65
Wait a minute, nobody said there’d be math.
Villago Delenda Est
Dionne is still a dickhead. The beanie brigade fails to acknowledge that the Obama proposal is what their various non-religious organizations operate under in a number of states right this very instance.
Also, calling boy-buggering cover up artist Dolan a “moderate” is Overton Window pushing, to say the least.
Dionne can still go fuck himself.
Batocchio
The Catholics have nice red uniforms.
Seriously, I have a very low opinion of the Catholic Church as an institution, most of all because of child rape and the Church’s corruption covering it up. However, there are plenty of Catholics who do a great deal of social work, and I respect that. That said, even the non-corrupt church officials still really need to get over their dysfunctional, obsessive attitudes toward sex.
As for libertarians, there are only perhaps 10% of them that aren’t useful idiots or eager shills for plutocracy.
Anne Laurie
@Citizen Alan:
That’s because you’re confusing “The Church”, the hierarchy, with the parish church around which Catholic women can organize a social life for themselves. I haven’t been part of a parish life since I graduated from parochial high school and moved away for college, but even in the days of my childhood, 1960s/70s, there was a clear demarcation drawn between “our” church, St. Brigid’s or Sacred Heart or Perputual Help or whatever, and the Vatican guys who theoretically owned that church & our allegiances. The more intellectual Catholics complained that the relationship between each parish and the Mother Church hadn’t much progressed since its roots in feudal Europe. I suspect that social-network aspect has only become more important to women, especially women with children; between increased mobility and the shredding of government safety nets, the parish church is still a place where a woman newly moved to a community can introduce herself, find a daycare center or a school she trusts for her children, get leads for the best places to rent, shop, use an EBT card without being shamed. If she’s scared by the apparent randomness of modern social progress, she can also get reinforcement that she’s not alone in mistrusting those people who are not members of her tribe. But a lot of Good Catholic Women — and I have every reason to suspect this is true of women, and men, in just about every other officially sanctioned religious community, from the Amish to the Scientologists — go to church because it’s a respite from their private burdens, plus a place to meet & socialize with other members of ‘their tribe’, plus a connection to a ritual that comforts them. Remember, most of those Good Catholic Women use birth control, have (have had) sex outside of marriage, etc. What the guys DougJ refers to as the Red Beanie Brigade have as much to do with these women’s feelings about their church as… well, what Joe Lieberman’s or Blanche Lincoln’s antics have to do with us Democrats’ opinions of the Democratic Party!
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
i am not qualified to answer for why people don’t hate catholics, libertarians, or penn state enough.
although sometimes when i think about it, i wonder if i could or should hate catholic institutions more than i do.
EIGRP
@dollared:
I’m going to go with your family.
Seems to me, people like that woman have their own little world and they can only fathom fitting into it. A nice hierarchical structure brings order to their lives. That could be her husband, her father, or even the priest.
Eric
EIGRP
@Spaghetti Lee:
So I should feel sympathy for the child molesters but not approve of the way the leaders are handling the child molesting? I’ll pass on that one.
Eric
GregB
My cousin, who takes his elderly aunt to church every week noted a few weeks ago that the usually genial and young Latin-American priest was sidelined for a day and replaced with on old codger who went on a jeremiad against birth control, President Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
He was quite disturbed.
I think Anonymous should do some digging through the Catholic church’s digital archives and blow the lid off the criminal conspiracy amongst the leadership.
geg6
Well Doug, I have nothing but contempt for both the Catholic Church and for libertarians. But my contempt for the Catholic Church is special and very personal. I hope the church goes as far as they like in their jihad against women and gays and makes itself even more irrelevent than it already is. I hope they go so far that the whole corrupt and inhuman ediface crumbles and disappears from the face of the earth. At which point I’ll hop a flight to Rome and salt the earth that the Vatican sat upon. Can’t say I feel quite the same about libertarians.
reflectionephemeral
C’mon man. Nobody’s mom ever cried because they stopped subscribing to Reason. No family owes their education & moral outlook to the centuries-old tradition of libertarian education.
Even I still feel some tug of allegiance to the Church, because of my grandmother’s belief, my brother’s Jesuit education. and my wife’s Catholic upbringing. And I was raised by semi-angry lapsed Catholics in suburban Boston! God has created no greater force for atheism in this world than the Catholic Church of Boston.
Frankly, this post, by overlooking the philosophical, ethnic, & family allegiance of a religion, & treating an institution as if it were the mere sum of its ideological assertions, reminds me of libertarianism in its unrealistic reductiveness. I think David Kokkh at #11 is correct– that the American bishops have sold their birthright for the mess of pottage that is being a part of today’s Republican Party. But it’s no surprise that people remember the good of the Church, & feel some allegiance to it, despite that fact.
JPL
The discussion is to deep this early in the morning. My son came over and set up his hbo go on my roku so I could watch Game Change. I woke up at least ten times after suffering nightmares because Sarah Palin was president. The bishops would be better able at handling the job.
brantl
; Who would these be? They’ve been directly shilling for liars for years, there has been no layers of removal from this kind of bullshit in these establishments. On the other hand, many of the Catholics (and I have no more sympathy for the whole church than you do) can say that no one in my church (meaning their local church) did those things, and so they don’t believe that soemone did it somewhere in another local church.
It’s projection, but who doesn’t do that, to one extent or another? Is it overly simplistic and wrong? Hell, yes. Will every lifelong Catholic do it to some extent. You damn betcha.
mai naem
I am not catholic but I gotta agree with the others here who say its a place to socialize etc. not religion. My sister goes to church(not catholic) faithfully not because shes particularly overly religious but for her kids to have some place where they can belong.vA church where they will meet like minded kids and parents(the kids in this church happen to be end up mostly college educated and successful.) A church where they can go to the same denomination when they go to college and beyond. My mom made a pretty hefty donation to the church when they were building a new facility because her grandkids can get married free in the cnurch when the time comes(yes, really!)
squirrelhugger
@Martin: Curiously, libertarianism should be spewing good deeds. For example, Ron Paul should be a poster child for private social support of single and/or impoverished mothers, adoption and child care, to reduce the pressure for abortion without shoving his minority standards on the rest. Leading to the not-so-subtle point that modern Libertarians are simply Reactionaries who’ve successfully stolen a less offensive label for themselves. Get that damn little dog to pull the curtain aside and call them what they are, and they become feeble old men frantically pulling levers.
dogwood
Doug J,
When you can find the equivalence of nuns and Jesuits in the libertarian movement, I’ll grant you your premise.
Omnes Omnibus
@dogwood: Libertarian nun equivalents? Well, there is always McMegan.
MattF
The difference is that I know quite a few Catholics whose faith has led them to do good things in their lives (e.g., Peace Corps, charity, volunteer work), while that’s not true for any libertarians that I know.
Suffern ACE
So will Biden be excommunicated by the pope or Pelosi? Or will there just be a blanket ban on all registered Catholic Dems?
maurinsky
I feel like I bring both Catholicism and Libertarianism together, because the only reason I go to church is because they pay me – I cantor for coin.
I come from an Irish-Catholic family. My mother doesn’t go to church anymore, but my father goes – he’s old school, he goes to confession every week, too. My older sister goes because she loves the ritual and iconography of the RC church – not to mention she’s turning into a conservative as the years go by*; my younger sister has had her kids baptized because it made my mother happy, but doesn’t actually go to church. My kids aren’t baptized, and I don’t believe in anything supernatural, but I go to church sometimes multiple times a week. They pay me more per hour than my regular job!
*I have a theory of conservatism which is that people who follow the rules and live the way the patriarchy wants us to live become more resentful of people living more fulfilling lives of their own choosing as they get older, which is one of the reasons they start to vote Republican.
3 of my aunts are nuns (well, only one is still with us), and they were all politically liberal – they joined the church after Vatican II, expecting that the church would continue to liberalize.
The priest in the church where I sing is also a Vatican II priest – the week the Bishops had the priests read their letter against Obama in the pulpit, he didn’t give a sermon at all.
Joe Bohemouth
I used to be in the “love the church but rue the hierarchy” boat. No more. What’s the point? We are not living in ethmic ghettoes anymore. The no Irish need apply signs came down a long time ago. We are free people; time to move on. Nobody cares about your Mark Shields serving mass in the 1950s stories anymore.
Cassidy
@EIGRP: That’s not what he said, at all. But you know that.
Frankensteinbeck
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
Because the Libertarian movement is, top to bottom, dedicated to the evils it produces and the members who do not want that evil (say, destroying the safety net) are few indeed. The Catholic Church’s top hierarchy is currently filled with reactionary hypocrites who are encouraging evil, but the Church itself is still a very large organization and movement that is mostly dedicated to an entirely different moral outlook. And no, they’re no more eager to leave the Church than we were to overthrow the US government when Bush was in charge.
In case you try to throw history in, the Church is not more evil than governments of most periods (the Crusades being a political move by all of Europe, for example), so no, it’s not inherent.
If you hate or have contempt for religion universally, which many here do, that is a separate issue from trying to compare the Church to Libertarianism.
Lee
This is an organization with a centuries old doctrine of encryption. I would not be surprised if the Catholic Church is a tougher target than the DoD.
Frankensteinbeck
@Lee:
Called ‘writing things down’.
dogwood
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t think nuns are that into kitchen gadgets.
MosesZD
@Citizen Alan: Ah, yes… My favorite quote of all time vis Libertarianism:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
I read them both… Sorry, let me put it this. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings multiple times. I have a first edition Silmarillion. I have most of Tolkien books besides that series, I have the the LOTR movies (bought an new set for DvD even as my old VHS were worn out) and even my MMOing has included two years of Lord of the Rings online.
Atlas Shrugged… I don’t normally not finish books. It takes an impressively bad book for me to not finish it… This was one of them. I’ve tried three times and never made it a 100 pages in…
Poorly written and conceptually stupid as this is not how real people actually act. And while it’s fiction, you still have to have some grounding in reality.
mattH
Radley Balko and police brutality. Admittedly only one thing, but still, it’s one.
Betsy
The difference is the threat of eternal damnation.
ChristianPinko
Because of Helen Prejean, the Berrigan Brothers, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Michael Pfleger . . . there’s a long tradition of emphasis on social justice in Catholicism which has only recently been shunted aside in favor of a one-sided emphasis on misogyny. That’s why many of us think the Catholic Church is, or has been, worthy of respect while the libertarians have never been anything but a facade for Republican conservatism. For the record, I’m not Catholic, I’m Baptist.
Boots Day
There was a time when the Catholics who became notorious for their political views were liberals, like the Berrigan brothers and Archbishop Romero, going all the way back to Dorothy Day. I am hopeful that sometime in my lifetime, we will see that kind of social concern in the church again.
AA+ Bonds
Um, because those Catholics you talk about are left-wing and vote Democratic, Doug
Was that a really long rhetorical question or do people actually struggle with this distinction
MattF
@ChristianPinko: Well, in fact, Catholic advocacy of soshal justice is rather recent, historically speaking. This is not to deny the importance of the Catholic soshal justice movement– But it’s a fact that, until rather recently, the Church was a steadfast part of the reactionary alliance of Church, King, and Army.
aspasia
Oh come on. We are talking about a church that used to burn people at the stake if they didn’t accept Catholic teaching. People like Jews, Protestants, and the occasional scientist. They haven’t yet shut down the office of the Inquisition, although they did rename it. And guess who ran that office until just a few years ago? Cardinal Ratzinger. During its modern history the church has always preferred fascists to communists (granted, not a great choice) but they’ve never liked democracy much either.
And oh yeah: Vatican II was on the verge of permitting women to use contraception, until the college of cardinals intervened after John XXIII died. Infallibility, my foot. Let’s call it what it is: politics.
Joe Bohemouth
@Boots Day:
But also George Meany, the elder Mayor Daley, Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater’s running mate Congressman Whatsisname, Joe Kennedy (the first one). Plenty of those Catholic households I grew up with that had a picture of JFK and the Pope also had a warm place for General Franco.
I won’t deny that the church I grew up with produced some cool prog activists. But even in the golden age wherein The Spirit of Vatican II hovered over the waters, they weren’t anything close to the mainstream of the church.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
Obama actually nailed this but good back in 2008; something about clinging to something destructive.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
The church has a wide spectrum of beliefs encompassed within it. The current reich wing hierarchy emphasizes only whatever is convenient for their narrow minded vision. If the bishops pursue their political activism any further (and I think they will) I’ll stop attending. The current popes have stacked the hierarchy full of right tards that will take generations to correct so fuck them.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
@aspasia: Protestants burned people too.
Robert
As we all know, Catholicism is the only corrupt religious organization in the world. Let’s shame everyone who has ever had any association with Catholics for eternity because the higher ups hid years of abuse from parishoners who had no idea this shit was happening. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
And I’m sure you extend this to democrats being incapable of having loyal monogamous relationships because Athony Weiner/Bill Clinton, that’s why. Or every republican is a racist hate monger because Rush Limbaugh, that’s why. Or every libertarian hates black people because Ron Paul, that’s why.
If you can show me where, in Catholic dogma, it says it’s ok to rape little boys, I’ll concede that the church is ruined. Go on. Show me where in all of the rules of Catholicism it says that priests are required to touch every boy who crosses their path. I had a fucked up childhood, but it had nothing to do with the local priest touching me or my friends.
rumpole
Doug-
These sentiments are really beneath you, and it’s exactly the kind of bile that I’d expect to find on restate, only flipped against (pick ethnic group). There are many “reasonable” catholic folks that dislike the institutional hierarchy and feel a deep affinity for parts of the faith. There are differences between those, for example, who may think that birth control is wrong as part of their faith, and those who would impose that faith on others through legislation. There are a fair number of Catholics who fall in the latter category. That faith is both a very private thing, and shouldn’t be ridiculed.
Coming out and saying “your church is nothing but boy raping” is not exactly the best way to win friends and influence people (and inaccurate besides). That kind of “one size fits all” libel is exactly what the other side does.
Yes-the curia is fucked up. Most Catholics know that (except the ones that show up on TV). Many (maybe even most) would also prefer that the church stay the hell out of American politics. I get it-you’re angry, and it’s a blog, so BFD. But what you wrote is no more nor less than religious bigotry. What you object to is that “faith-based” (substitute “magical”) thinking is being used to make policy. That shouldn’t be done. It’s a far cry from that to all members of a certain faith are magical (and pederast-favoring) thinkers. The latter is bigotry, pure and simple.
You’re better than that.
Paul in KY
@dollared: You shouldn’t need a church to give you a ‘sense of community’.
Paul in KY
@Spaghetti Lee: I would like the Catholic laity to start remembering what great popes John XXIII and Paul VI were and then maybe, how the current one & the last one don’t seem to be following in John & Paul’s footsteps (while appropriating their names, in one case).
Shinobi
@dollared: You don’t have to be catholic to go to catholic school. In fact the best way to make sure your kids don’t stay catholic is to send them to catholic school. But it is a good education and community. We had 2 Jews a Lutheran and a Hindu in my HS graduating class of 60. A good education is a good education.
Paul in KY
@Boots Day: That all stopped when John Paul II became pope.
Nutella
There are still moderate and progressive bishops? Ratzi hasn’t got to them yet, but he will.
Every time one of the bishops is quoted anywhere claiming a Catholic opposition to birth control or abortion requires opposition to a Democratic politician, the next sentence needs to be “The bishop didn’t mention that the Catholic Church is also morally opposed to capital punishment and the invasion of Iraq and in favor of a stronger government safety net. The bishop’s position isn’t Catholic, it’s Republican.”
scav
Motzart. The Requiem and certain portions of the, what is it? The Great Mass in C? Major? And my weakness for architecture, but that leads to multi-denominational passes.
Well, the above and that I sometimes foolishly try to distinguish my white hat hatred for institutions and actual individuals in front of me that may have mixed motivations and redeeming qualities. But it probably is really only about all that grand echoey shadowed stone veering into space with the music.
Paul in KY
@Robert: They did do that (the covering up). Why, in your view, did they (the decision makers) do that?
Nathaniel
@rumpole: Everytime you give money to the Catholic Church, some of the money is going to the protection of child rapers. That’s a fact. And that’s not going to change anytime soon.
You really cool with that?
Shinobi
This is such a complicated issue, when it comes to the church. My friends and I have been discussing it at great length the last few weeks. We were all raised catholic though none of us still practice.
As a catholic there are a few ways you can handle church stupidity on any issue:
1. Leave the church because you are committed to not being part of an organization that does things that violate your fundamental moral code. (I did this a long time ago. But being part of a group is not something I value highly, I value my moral and intellectual integrity much more than community.)
2. Leave the church as some sort of protest. (This will never work. The church, as a “we tell you what to believe and you believe it” organization cannot change its mind because its followers want it to. I has evolved for centuries as a top down government like organization. It is not a democracy. All this achieves is the removal of liberal minded people from the church, leaving behind the fanatics.)
3. Stay in the church, advocate for change. (This is not going to work, see point 2.)
4. Shrug, say it is how you were raised, God forgives, continue to be catholic. (I think this largely has to do with a mindset surrounding tradition, and being part of a community, and mostly tradition. If that’s what you value this is probably what you will do. And most people seem to value this, because this is what they are doing.)
With all this said, I see no reason that non Catholics should avoid catholic institutions if those institutions offer something they need. (Hospitals, schools, charity.) The church is great at providing things like education and medical care because the church evolved as a government, not as a real source of spiritual enlightenment.
It’s not like they really need your money and keeping it away from them is helping. Take advantage of what they’ve set up, just make sure you are informed about any religious limitations. (Though I find that on the ground the practices are less doctrinal than the Vatican would probably prefer.)
scav
@Nathaniel: Some of the money people donate the DNC is going to support candidates they’re not wild about, so are you suggesting every person should stop supporting the DNC 100%? People will have differing views on how best to express and implement their distaste for larger organizations.
schrodinger's cat
@Citizen Alan: Its not just the Catholic Church that does that. Most religions consider men to be better and women somehow defective. Most religious dogma is about keeping women in their place, be it Islam, RC Church or Hinduism.
Nathaniel
@scav: I think we can agree that supporting the DNC is a little different from protecting child rapists.
Or, I would at least hope we can agree.
J.R.
I did read Atlas Shrugged back in college, seemed like very poor SciFi to me. But then I read LOTR in Jr High, along with lots of other SciFi by the masters of that era. Someone in the Jr High library thought it was real literature, or close enough, and if it got a few kids to start reading a lot as a habit, well, that’s a good thing.
Libertarians (Libtards to me, I know some folks use that word differently) are ignorant of almost everything. The people writing about it know nothing about how real people behave, and the people practising it by hiding in the mountains know nothing of how societies behave. None of them know anything about any branch of science, even PolySci or Psych.
I know a couple of ministers I respect, but most are grifters trying to make a great living w/o any risk or work. My friend who is an Episcopalian priest tells of being seated beside a minister (Southern Baptist, maybe? something like that anyhoo) on an air[lane flight.
When he discovered my friend was a priest, he asked “What’s your percentage of the take?” Friend was secretly shocked, and told him that priests were on salary, with benefits, and 100% of the “take” went to the diocese. Not sure he believed that, but whatever.
I wasn’t surprised, why else would Jim and Tammy Fae be so into their church? Or Franklin Graham??
I got heckled pretty mercilessly as a kid in the bible-belt, I was the only non-church goer any of the other kids knew, and there was a local Assembly of God preacher who had a radio show and talked about my family every time he was on the air, 2 or 3 times a week. Godless Unitarians!!! Pretty much left me cold for any god bothering.
scav
@Nathaniel: well, some might argue that the entire Catholic hierarchy is about slightly more than merely being a front for child rapists, but your model of reality may vary as well.
Mnemosyne
@J.R.:
IIRC, what got Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker into trouble was selling timeshares at their theme park without actually building them (IOW, it was good old-fashioned real estate fraud).
I have a soft spot for Tammy Faye, though — she was one of the only conservative Christians to break with the crowd and work against homophobia (she even used to make appearances at Gay Pride parades). And their son, Jay, seems to show much more of her influence than his father’s since he lost his first church because he supports LGBT equality and gay marriage.
Gex
I’ve never understood why they can’t believe all the same things, but stay home and do it. Follow the Catholic rules but don’t be a Catholic. But of course, I am an atheist and I can use reason to deal with issues like this.
For them the difference is Jesus. If there is one true church that will get you to salvation, save you from eternal damnation, do you skip out on that just cause those guys rape kids? They already mostly believe that what we do in this life isn’t important unless it is in aid of getting us to the right place in the next life.
Also, they are suffering fetishists. Any perusal of the Catholic faith will show that suffering is very, very important to them.
There are other Libertarian daddies. There’s only one Jeebus daddy.
PTirebiter
@rumpole:
Exactly. How could anyone still love their mother after discovering she had a brother who married a woman who had a nephew that was a serial rapist? And when I said things like I despise the dog-ass forty-niners, she’ remind me to try not to confuse the uniform with the person that happened to be wearing it on Sundays.
rumpole
@Nathaniel:
Interesting strawman. Where did I talk about where I gave money? But let’s assume that I did.
Yes, it’s true that some of that cash will go towards defense of people who don’t deserve it. That defense cost, however, is relatively trivial. The far greater cost (and liability) will go towards compensating victims. I have no problem with that particular disbursement. Some of that money may go towards social services, or paying the parish electric bill. The most offensive thing that the church does (to me anyway) are the so-called pregnancy counseling centers, where in many cases they just lie to people.
Gex
@dollared: And here is exactly why I have such a problem with religion. Sure, it does harm to others in society such as women and gays and some children. But it does something really good for me, so who cares? Instead of going without so we can stop the beast faster, I’m going to drag this out, get more kids raped, and still sleep at night.
ETA: I really do believe if every anti-child-rape Catholic actually walked out, they’d have to respond somehow. Unless the number of anti-child-rape Catholics is much lower than I expect it to be.
shortstop
The hell? Did I dream all those DougJ comments along the lines of…”I know a lot of Catholics who aren’t like this, so I’m not going to slam the whole church,” “A lot of Catholic activists do a lot of good, so I’m not going to tar them with the same brush,” etc.?
FlipYrWhig
You know how one of the ways to be Jewish is to observe the doctrinal stuff as little as possible but to identify with aspects of the culture that was built around the religion? Catholics do that too, yes?
Gex
Where the fuck does everyone think the councils and hierarchy get their money and power? From the good people at all the parishes who aren’t like them, that are less dogmatic. I totally get that the people aren’t the hierarchy. They’re just the people who prop up the hierarchy. And again, not because they are indifferent to the problems, but just because being in the right church or the personal benefits they receive outweigh the benefits of leaving and forcing the issue.
Gex
Oh wait. Their power comes from God. That’s why we can’t do anything about it. We can’t charge all the people who just took notes and aided and abetted rapists because the Church is SPECIAL. Special enough that you shouldn’t feel a need to stop supporting them despite their policies. Remember it was Ratzinger in 2001 that told the Bishops to report issues to him and not to legal authorities.
So why bother fucking talking about it? Let’s just legalize child rape for Catholics. (Officially I mean. Not unofficially like it is now.)
ETA: Special enough that when the Milwaukee Diocese (where new Cardinal Dolan had been) had 8000 incidents of unreported cases come to light in the bankruptcy and the news barely made a splash. If Catholics can’t understand why the rest of us are pissed off, this is why. The state can’t do shit about it. Only they can. And they won’t.
liberal
@Paul in KY:
Exactly.
PTirebiter
@Paul in KY: Because as liberals know, power corrupts and absolute power…
It’s the human condition and no institution Is immune.
Trakker
Somehow I got the idea that to be Catholic you had to believe that the Catholic God exists. I mean that’s what the religion is based on, right? So what is this God they worship doing while his priests are buggering and even torturing little kids? And we’re not talking rare occurrences, they’ve been doing this and getting away with it for decades if not centuries!
My disgust for Catholics isn’t with the church leadership, it’s with the people who continue to worship a God who does nothing to help the most vulnerable among us. Their God is either weak, incompetent, or evil.
On top of that, the church is led by celibate men (an unnatural state if there ever was one) who have no knowledge of sex or marriage, especially from a woman’s point of view, and it shows. Yeah, tradition and sociability are good, very good, but you’re supporting an organization that is choosing to use it’s moral capital on less important things (really, abortion is worse than stupid wars?) and is condemning poor women (especially) to a life of misery and poverty. Thanks loads!
(BTW, I’m an atheist married to a Catholic. Go figure.)
Gex
@rumpole: And what about the amount that is spent to support the administration whose policy it is to cover up these incidents and expose more kids to pedos? Just the cost of doing bidness I suppose.
PTirebiter
@Gex:
Cheap shot aside, you might consider the unintended consequences. You may.be right, but the risk is not something to be taken cavalierly.
IMHO. Better to advocate for huge punitive damages, they’re not insurable and properties would have to be sold, etc. It’s more realistic and might preserve the good and destroy the heinous power of the hierarchy.
( too bad the supreme five capped punitive damages.)
PTirebiter
@Trakker: wait a minute, your wife disgusts you? that’s got to be uncomfortable.
Uncle Cosmo
Every time I hear some apologist-for-Catholicism complain that “the Church isn’t the hierarchy,” I hear the voice of a PR flack for a rapacious multinational whining about how many workers & small shareholders will be hurt if some law is passed. Like Martin Sheen’s Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone, the craven, corrupt, concupiscent** old men in skirts shove their congregations in front of them as human shields to protect them from the consequences of their actions.
As many have pointed out, there is a current of progressive social activism within the Church, but it’s a trickle compared with the riptide dragging the faithful out into the authoritarian neo-&-paleofeudal depths. For every Leo XIII putting forth a (limited & catholocentric) social gospel there is a Pius IX forbidding Italian Catholics from participating in elections in a snit over losing his temporal power (over the former Papal States). And Catholic initiatives for “social justice” are always, always, always subordinated to the authority of the craven etc. old men in skirts–it’s got to be their way or the highway.
I know there are some good people in the Catholic Church who do everything within their (very limited) power to mitigate the stupidity & cupidity of the hierarchy. I also know there are some good people answering the customer “help” lines who do everything within their (very limited) power to mitigate the rapacity of their employers. The difference is that the latter would lose their livelihoods if they walked away. I’m still trying to understand what the former think they’d lose if they did the same–& if they think it’s their connection to God, I wonder about their intelligence, since the Reformation gang blew that one out of the water about 500 years back…
(**You can google it like I had to…)
daveNYC
I get that people still go to The Church for whatever reasons. The things I don’t get are
1) How these good people ever expect the Church to change in any way? The Cardinals select the Pope, and the Pope selects the Cardinals. As an institution, it’s totally setup to double-triple-quadruple down on a given policy direction.
2) Where exactly is this seperation between The Church (which is good) and The Heirarchy (which is bad)? Sure you’ve got the regular peeps in the pews, and they’re as good/bad/whatever as the members of any other religion, but they have no power. It’s not like it’s just the CEO and Board of Directors who are messing things up, priests seem to be quite willing to go along with whatever comes out of Rome. As far as I can tell, it’s a top down gig, and all the power in The Church resides in The Heirarchy, which to me makes any differentiation between the two irrelevant.
Gex
@Uncle Cosmo: I would only add that another goal of their charity is to proselytize. Recruiting people into the church to keep tithing up to support the hierarchy in other words. The proof of this is when you see Catholic Charities refuse to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, and adopt out orphans if they have to be civil to gay people.
Gex
@PTirebiter: My point is, we’ve proven, repeatedly that the government/state cannot stop them. We can’t hold them responsible even when they move pedo from parish to parish. If the state can’t, the laity must. And they won’t so they get no sympathy from me. I don’t see how that’s a fucking cheap shot, it’s the reality. No members, no power. Members need to think about why they are delegating their power to these guys.
If we’d been talking about the Boys and Girls club of America this would have gone down differently. But BECAUSE this is a religion, this is the way it is. Take care of your shit, Catholics, or let us take care of it for you.
ETA: Need I remind anyone that a 2002 study found that 2/3 of American Bishops participated in covering up abuse allegations? What, exactly, has been done about it in the last decade except for Catholics giving the institution tons more money to fight gays?
scav
Gex, I 100% totally understand the rage but I think things might be a little more complicated. I can’t really safely assume you’ve turned in your US passport and renounced your American citizenship and are happily practicing your democratic ideals elsewhere in purity because this country has made any number of shit poor actions and cover-ups domestically and internationally since its very founding, can I? I mean, if everybody that disagreed with the USian shit left, they’d be no country left to bullshit about its exceptionalism, right? Problem solved?
As an aside, the Problem of Evil existed long before the exposure of industrial-scale priest buggery and transfer. Earthquakes, pestilence, famine, they’ve long ago figured out how to paper over those issues. The mysterious ways of GoD clause is basically Here Be Dragons and the Junk Drawer of Theological Bits That Didn’t Fit.
Second aside, I’m not sure that Protestants as a whole are covering themselves in glory as agents of Progressivism either. There are some prime knuckdraggers without incense bags in that lot.
Ah hell, I just live in a complexicated world that never made any sense and was full of people that I didn’t understand, why am I bothering?
Gex
@PTirebiter: Or do you mean the unintended consequences of possibly moving the social safety net to the public sphere instead of the “do what we tell you with your lady bits” sphere.
I would rather have people start thinking about then unintended consequences of creating an above the law institution that protects pedos. Where do you think pedos want to work now? And does the church have a priest shortage? Sound like a recipe for disaster, but we’ll just stand by and watch this train run off the cliff.
daveNYC
@scav:
The USA has a mechanism to change its government and thereby change it’s policy. What would be the equivalent for the Catholic Church?
Gex
@scav: Nations and religions aren’t really a good comparison. You can go without a religion if necessary. you have to have a spot on this earth.
I wouldn’t put this on Catholics if the government were allowed to charge Bishops as accomplices. But face it. That would be a war on the Catholic church. And it would be these same Catholics that would see it as such.
So Catholics must take care of it themselves. And I haven’t seen SHIT done in the last decade except anti-gay scapegoating.
Gex
@daveNYC: Wait for God to finally decide child rape is bad.
Gex
Again, I will point out that the current culture of the Catholic Church is an open invitation for pedos to become priests. The church will defend them, the laity won’t take a very strong stand, and the government can’t get at them.
That pisses me off, and I don’t know why it doesn’t piss them off more.
FormerSwingVoter
Wow, it’s almost as if an entire organization specifically dedicated to anti-intellectualism ends up making bad decisions. Who’da thunk it?
Paul in KY
@daveNYC: Death of a pope.
geg6
@Gex:
And just to add a little more complexity to things, it’s not just child rape that the Church has committed and that the laity ignore. It’s forced workhouses, kidnapping, child stealing, and numerous other violations of human rights that continue until this very day. As a victim of the church’s criminal acts, I, too, have no patience for its apologists. The hierarchy wouldn’t exist or have the power to get away with their crimes if the laity did not enable them by continuing to support them, if not in word, by deed. And that deed is continuing to financially and publicly back them up no matter how heinous the crimes they commit. Fuck the church and fuck all those “good” Catholics. I don’t believe in an afterlife or a god any more (the one good thing the Catholic Church did for me!), but if I did, I would pray every day that each of those people suffer in eternity for all the lives they have ruined.
Clime Acts
@Robert:
Spare me.
You are in willful denial, Robert. The only way so many priests could get away with boy fucking for so long is for their stupid parishioners to be willfully looking the other way while their sons and daughters were diddled by spiritual authority figures.
This is why I have so little respect for Catholics who stay…there is NO way many or most parishioners did not have an inkling of the sickness going on but pretended otherwise because they were cowards.
TenguPhule
The same reason people can be Pro-Palestinian. Selective Ignorance.
TenguPhule
Our country has fought worse wars for less reason.
Nathaniel
@scav: Yazuka organized crime in Japan often owns charities and publicly helps out after disasters like the recent tsunami. Does this mean they get a pass for crime and murder?
Nathaniel
@rumpole: I’m not just talking about legal defense, but about the money and resources needed to hide and move people around for decades while buying off law enforcement and victims.
Is that just all fine?
FormerSwingVoter
@Clime Acts:
You’re grossly underestimating the power of denial. Listen, the entire point of Catholicism is that those in the church – the priests and bishops and so on – are, by definition, your moral and spiritual superiors. If Catholic priests and the Church as a whole are no better than anyone else, then Catholics are no better than any random Protestant making things up as they go along, and Catholics in general don’t have any more answers than anyone else of any other faith.
For Catholics, most will refuse to acknowledge that priests are no better than anyone else. If you see something that indicates that someone in the Church is just as bad as all those evil non-churchgoers, then you must have seen or understood things wrong. The problem must be with you, because otherwise your problem is with God (more specifically with his representatives on Earth, but no good Catholic would ever make that distinction).
Many who left the Church after all the child rape scandals started to break did so not just because they were disgusted with the Church, but because it forced them to evaluate all of the suspicious things they’d seen throughout their entire life with the suddenly new (if obvious in hindsight) understanding that those in the Church are just as capable of doing bad things as any imagined monster. They’re disgusted with the Church, sure, but also disgusted with their own treatment of the Church.
Just my $0.02, anyway.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
You know, Catholics, that there are a wide variety of churches to choose from. You don’t have to stay with the one that houses and protects a conspiracy to rape children.
If you’re such a lame-ass that you require a church to find friends and community, try the Unitarians or the Methodists.
If, however, you insist on sticking with the child-rapist club, you will be tarred by association. And this will be perfectly fair, because you made you choice.
ETA: And for those who think they’re clever by asking me why I’m still an American when my government has done so many horrible things: please show me how I can easily change my citizenship by choosing to go to a different building on Sunday mornings. Until you find such a place for me, I’ll just continue working to change the US government, because that’s a thing I can do. Good luck changing the despotic Catholic government.
PTirebiter
As if one would follow the other? Okay, if you’re sure the net will be there before anyone hits the ground.
Damn. I had no idea that every D.A. in the country was just standing around. Do you really think I’m somehow defending priests or the hierarchy? I don’t ned to prove my disgust for sick fucks to suggest my opinion on how it should be dealt with.
PTirebiter
No, what’s been proven again and again is that even in a secular, but constitutional government it’s very difficult to prosecute any corrupt institution that is very rich and powerfully connected. Add their despicable manipulation of their 1st amendment protections and it’s even harder. Think about Wall Street or Dupont Chemical or the Exxon Valdez.
But there are some very dedicated people working very hard to prosecute and change laws like the various statutes of limitations. The whole faith based initiative crap was a huge mistake and the loose definitions of tax exemption that pay full time religious lobbyist is bullshit. The system needs to reworked.
I understand the outrage, I share it, we just differ on how best to end the abuse.
Trakker
@PTirebiter: No, my wife doesn’t disgust me, her religion does, but that’s just a increasingly small part of her life.
Keith G
Despite being a very long term non-believer I am amazed by these attacks on Catholic faithful.
To what end?
Ruckus
@Keith G:
Possibly to show the hypocrisy of the organization and it’s supporters?
Going rhetorical, why don’t you believe? And why do people support something as abhorrent as the leadership of the catholic church? And if they do what does that say about them, that they believe in a greater ideal rather than the people running the show? Or that they accept the leadership and agree with it?
/rhetorical
Gex
@geg6: The worst part of it is the specialness they afford it that makes it impossible to leave is EXACTLY the specialness that prevents the government with dealing with this effectively. It is on them. If we thought for one moment they wouldn’t start calling it a war on religion if we subpoenaed all the files listing the priests that have been protected and move from parish to parish. Likewise they’d scream bloody murder if we add religious clergy to mandated reporter laws.
If they are too special for the government to deal with. And too special for the laity to leave. Let’s all then realize that it is legal to rape kids if you are a Catholic priest. Not technically, but functionally.
The worst part is this dynamic will draw pedos to the church like crazy. Catholic’s resistance to dealing with this will make it much worse. But where else can you go to be paid to commit your crimes?
Gex
@PTirebiter: The cases break when the paperwork leaks out. We for some reason can’t subpoena the church for the very detailed records they keep, deal with it, and move on. Boston broke because a Catholic attorney helped get evidence from inside. Milwaukee broke because of bankruptcy. (Did you know they campaigned against extending the statute of limitations in Wisconsin recently? I bet that’s where the money went.)
And why can’t we just subpoena their personnel records now that we reasonable suspicion of what would be in there?
All I’m complaining about is that the law is applied differently to them. Why are the people who knew things not in jeopardy? Not one single person has been tried for facilitating the child rapes, just the perps have been tried. Despite the fact that you can see the names of people who made decisions about moving these pedos around. It’s like just prosecuting the grunts for Gitmo. The people who keep records of child rapists, just file them away, and wait for another report to file can FOAD.
And if the law cannot touch the hierarchy (and face it this is very different than any other situation as Dolan just became Cardinal and will be whisked off to Rome if any of the Milwaukee stuff gets big, like Law was re Boston) then the laity needs to do something. That can piss you off if you like, I don’t care. Instead the laity quite clearly spent the last ten years battling same sex marriage. The same money, effort, organization, and determination would be better spent on the abuse issues, but they don’t care.
I guess where I am coming from is I would apparently condemn myself to eternal hell to save an ever growing tree of child rape victims. Because each pedo has many victims. And many victims become victimizers.
Fact is, I don’t need to care about any of this. I’m not taking my kids into these churches. Catholics can keep paying for this and keep sending their children into what will be increasingly dangerous environment if the church insists on being an accountability free haven for child rapists.