Originally Posted by seaweed

It does follow that anyone continuing inmembership, now these facts have emerged (and have been emerging for years) is themselves also complicit and stained by association, and lacking a moral compass.

How so? Unless you actively collude in something then you are prima facie innocent of that thing. Are you now switching fire from the unanimously guilty clergy, to a laity which you now wish to tar as unanimously guilty?

Would you argue for example that because some british soldiers in Iraq tried to cover up beatings and abuse, that the whole British Army is guilty? We should all sign off immediately to distance ourselves? Facile nonsense as is your assertion quoted above.

If an organisation around an idea is flawed, you have two choices. Firstly abandon the organisation and possibly the idea. Or secondly try and repair the organisation and maintain the idea - if you continue to believe the idea has value.

As for having "no moral compass", I think that charge would only apply if people were refusing to either admit the events or failing to make necessary changes. Which evidently is not happening. Still as you would like to cast the first stone against the RC church, is there a chance we might get a callibrating reading from your superior moral compass?

We shouldn't have too much trouble finding it, I imagine it is with you, as far up your own backside as you can manage...

Originally Posted by Excognito

Originally Posted by beemer007

Apologise if already been covered:

Excuse my ignorance of not trawling over the past 18 pages but Mr Dawkins & co are attempting to make a stand over this issue
Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, are seeking advice from human rights lawyers as to what legal action can be taken against the pope over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...-humanity.html

Would this be the same Richard Dawkins who wrote in 2006 "Only a minority of priests abuse the bodies of the children in their care. But how many priests abuse their minds? Why aren't Catholics and ex-Catholics lining up to sue the church into the ground, for a lifetime of psychological damage? Much as I would like to see the Roman Catholic Church ruined, I hate opportunistically retrospective litigation even more. "

I think I have made my position on Professor Dawkins pop philosophy and evangelical atheism clear on here. However I am amazed at what he and Dr Hitchens are trying to pull. The analogy they have developed between the Holy Father and General Pinochet is really rather disrespectful to the disappeared ones - yet as many of them were liberation theology Catholics I suppose they are "expendable".

If the Vatican is so pure why dont they just open the books on this, tell the world just how many cases there have been reported world wide, proove that they have not been covering it up for years,

Originally Posted by Cuddles

I think I have made my position on Professor Dawkins pop philosophy and evangelical atheism clear on here.

Evangelical pop philosophy - the very life and soul of the pious throughout the ages. The zealous priest ramming their perspective down the throats of the populus then offering them redemption and eternal salvation as a reward couldn't really be more evangelical or pop if you tried.

At least Hawkins comes from a position of rationality rather than a position of fantasy and foundless moral superiority.

Originally Posted by Cuddles

However I am amazed at what he (Hawkins) and Dr Hitchens are trying to pull..

Which is not as extraordinary as the Catholic church's cover up of the most despicable acts imaginable. The church's unwillingness to see justice done (not the whimsical claptrap of divine justice but genuine justice) is appalling, amounts to condoning it and, it would seem, is endemic at the highest echelons of that secretive and overly powerful organisation.

Church abuse

"Irish bishops often sent sex offender priests for therapy rather than using Church law which orders the defrocking of paedophile clergy" - Instead of informing the police, rather suggesting that they thought themselves above the law.

Time, I would have thought, for the police to investigate both the alleged perpetrators of the crimes and those who sought to protect the church (regardless of who they are) by covering it all up for decades.

Before becoming priests all applicants must undertake a 'Tiger Woods have sex with any piece of skirt Course'. If they turn odd after that burn them

Having attended a RC school I can recall plenty of physical abuse from the Nuns. The male teachers were non clergy but obviously devout catholics. Having served as an alter boy I never knew of any sexual abuse whatsoever. However, I have no doubt there has been more abuse than the church would care to admit.

I would now like to thank Sister Maureen and Sister Isobel. I wondered why I managed to cope better than most with R to I on a certain course. I guess having to kneel up straight with bare knees on a wooden floor whilst facing the wall (at the age of eight), whilst being slapped on the back of the calves or having the corner of a wooden ruler jabbed in the small of my back each time I relaxed must have pre-conditioned me for things to come in later life.

Most people of my age were beaten or caned at school, and that would now be called abuse, but that was not Rape, which is what we are on about here, these children were sexually assaulted or raped

More fatuous obfucation from Cuddles. Even he must have noticed that we have just CMd and sacked an RM officer and an RM NCO for FAR less than the sort of abuse we are talking about here. If abuse comes to light in the armed forces it gets jumped on very severely - the hierarchy do NOT condone it. As to the 'other thing', I can was told of one complaint by a junior rating where the officer concerned was sent for by his Captain and told that his resignation letter was expected on the Captain's desk by Colours the next day. Down the gangway and OUT. I knew someone else who was sacked in much the same way. Absolutely zero tolerance once the Command gets to hear of it.

It now appears that Ratzinger only worked as a parish priest for less than a year of his 59 years in the church, he has no experinnce of working or talking to normal people as he has lived in the Ivory tower of academea most of his adult life since leaving the Hitler youth in 1945