to think that the catholic church are bloody immoral and need to be made answerable to the shit they seem to get away with?

[cupcakesandbunting]

I am referring to this; www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11061296

and yes, I am totally aware that the police and government are to blame too but we expect governments and to an extent police, to be corrupt.

I am saying this as a RC too. I am fucking shocked at the amount of revolting crap that the church seem to get away with. Covering up paedophiles/abusers, bombers and who knows what else.

Why are they never made accountable?

In answer to OP,you betcha,of course they should be accountable,no one should be above,below or hidden from the law,i just cannot understand how the church has this power,who lets them have it,makes me mad.....who the fuck are'the church','the priests' that they have this power,who honestly gives a bloody damn about them any more.....and why are the taxpayers paying for the fucking popes visit(i will not write pope with a capital letter)

Broken Caps Lock? THAT MUST BE ANNOYING.

FYI, to all who think the Catholic Church was a major backer of the Nazis (and shame on you too), here's a little note on Catholic priests and members of the hierarchy and what happened to them in Dachau:

Dachau had a special "priest block." Of the 2720 priests (among them 2579 Catholic) held in Dachau, 1034 did not survive the camp. The majority were Polish (1780), of whom 868 died in Dachau.

Here's the fate of a few:

* a number of the 108 Martyrs of World War Two:
* Father Jean Bernard (1907?1994), Catholic priest from Luxembourg who was imprisoned from May, 1941 to August, 1942. He wrote the book Pfarrerblock 25487 about his experiences in Dachau; it was recently translated into English (translation Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau ISBN 978-0-9725981-7-0). The movie The Ninth Day is based on his diary.
* Blessed Titus Brandsma, Dutch Carmelite priest and professor of philosophy, died 26 July 1942
* Norbert Čapek (1870?1942) founder of the Unitarian Church in the Czech Republic
* Anton Fränznick, in Dachau since 1942, died 27 January 1944
* Blessed Stefan Wincenty Frelichowski Catholic priest, died 23 February 1945
* Blessed Stefan Grelewski, Catholic priest, prisoner No. 25281, starved to death in Dachau on 9 May 1941
* Hilary Paweł Januszewski
* Ignacy Jeż Catholic Bishop
* Joseph Kentenich, founder of the Schoenstatt Movement, spent three and a half years in Dachau
* Blessed Michał Kozal
* Adam Kozlowiecki, Polish Cardinal
* Blessed Karl Leisner, in Dachau since 14 December 1941, freed 4 May 1945, but died on 12 August from tuberculosis contracted in the camp
* Bernhard Lichtenberg - was sent to Dachau but died on his way there in 1943
* Martin Niemöller, imprisoned in 1941, freed 4 May 1945
* Hermann Scheipers
* Richard Schneider, in Dachau since 22 November 1940, freed 29 March 1945
* Aloys Scholze, died 1 September 1942
* Lawrence Wnuk
* Bishop Jan Maria Michał Kowalski, the first Minister Generalis (Minister General) of the order of the Mariavites. He perished on 18 May 1942, in a gas chamber in Schloss Hartheim.

I agree Roobie. The casting of stones at the Catholic Church is getting to be boringly predictable here. Same old names, same silly ranting, same kitchen sinks thrown.

inciting armed rebellion against the London government, as the Loyalists of 1914 threatened. You can find any amount of anti-Catholic ranting by Paisley anywhere you care to look on the net. This is the man the NI police feared when they decided to send Chesney away from NI. He didn't need much of an excuse to incite the sort of hatred that spewed weekly from his lips at the pulpit, and occasionally, and regrettably in venues outside of NI (but not to his shame, for instance in Strasbourg when he interrupted Pope JP II's address of the European Parliament with rude heckling and waving of posters calling the Pope, a former slave under the Nazis in Poland, the Antichrist)

And no, it is not a club. It is a certain kind of spiritual journey, an individual experience of faith, a relationship with God that takes place in private and in communion with others of the same baptism.

If any other so called organisation had members who had,or do behave in the way the catholic church has allowed it's members to behave,and had covered up in the way that the catholic church has,they would have been hounded and vilified by both press and public and government

Heracles.....twat

Who the fuck are the vatican that they get to investigate criminal activity,surely that is the job of the Police

Charmed, I'm sure. You silver tongued fox...

"All religions are auld wives' fables, but an honest man has nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come."

Robert Burns

The priest at DH's church (I go with him occasionally but am not Catholic myself) speaks scathingly of the monsters who were allowed to abuse children.

I was gonna say some other stuff, but then mathanxiety said it for me :)

FWIW, I don't believe in tax-funded religious schools, even though I'm (well, technically) a religious person. Of course I'm American and we don't have them here; our public (state) schools are secular by law.

And yes, when we go to church we put money in the collection. It goes to make wells and buy goats in Africa.

And my question was, who are the vatican that they get to investigate criminal activity...

As far as I can tell, mathanxiety's basing his defence on attacking the NI Protestants; an interesting technique I'll grant you. Don't for a second think I save my ire strictly for the faith of my birth; Paisley fails twice in proclaiming faith over reason AND in being a thoroughly reprehensible human being.

Mine is an equal-opportunity mockery...

'Who are' [sic] the Vatican? Well, it's a sovereign city-state so it has exactly te powers you describe within its borders. I'm not sure it claims to have such powers without; what are you driving at here?

Oh ,get a freaking grip love,who gave the catholic church(the vatican)oooops the pope,the right to investigate criminal activity?....you talk MUMBLE... sorry,still TWAT

As I said: without its borders, nobody. What's your drunken point, pet?

In actual fact Heracles,you are actually mental...[sic?]what's all that about?...sovereign city state...who voted THEM in in then....all you fucking catholics?oooops no,'cos you don't get a choice

OH Fuck,sorry Heracles,you are wrong and i am right .....twat

"In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression."

Oscar Arnulfo Romero, 1917-1980

Brief biography here of a man whom many on this thread would consider a fiend.

"I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children."

"?The real conflict is inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of concentration camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are victories on the battle-field if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves??

Maximilian (Raymond) Kolbe, 1894-1941 (another fiend)

Chibi, you have been good on this thread. I don't agree with anything that you have said, but you have helped keep the debate going as exactly that; a debate, not a silly fishwife slanging match that these things often descend into. Good, calm arguments, clearly put.

CheerfulYank, "it goes to make wells and buy goats in Africa".

While I do not wish to belittle the help that religious organisations provide to Africa, lets not be in any doubt that this comes with a price.

The catholic church activily preaches against contraception that would save lives in Africa. And before anyone says it, it isn't as simple as saying they don't force anyone. Africa and it's problems are far more complicated than that. Woman already struggling to get their men to wear condoms in a society where most women have little to no say, do not need the Church (their Faith) fueling the issue. The one thing that these men would listen to above all else is the Church.

Sanielle, is it just catholics you hate?

The story of Maximillian Kolbe is one that has always moved me beyond measure.

My grandmother was a Catholic who stopped practising after the War because of the actions of the Pope. For her it was the fact that she had to believe in the infallibility of the Pope that was the deal breaker, because he quite clearly wasn't. She never converted to any other faith though and never had the solace of returning to hear mass or recieve Communion. I don't think she ever got over the sense of betrayal.

There have been and still are some amazing people within the Catholic church (Lavinia Byrne's story is worth a google) and there are some people - mostly at the top - for whom the church exists to serve itself and whose main desire it is to keep it like that. But then few religious institutions serve their original purpose and certainly my experience of the Anglian church is that its main purpose is to ensure its survival in its current form rather than questioning if that is actually the best way of serving.

I was a "cradle Catholic", but I have subsequently become an atheist. Of course the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is shit. Every sane person must surely condemn the covering up of the practices of paedophile priests. Of course these hideous people should have been named, shamed and prosecuted - not just moved to other parishes in order to save the blushes of the Church.

(I have all sorts of other disagreements with the Church, but won't go into those now, as they are off-topic.)

But even I can see that there are individuals within the church who are/were lovely people. (Mother Teresa, to take a very obvious example; my mother's parish priest, who even when he was dying of cancer found time to visit parishioners; my mother and various of her friends who have provided care to all sorts of people living by themselves.)

I agree with Chibi's posts.

I also think that the practice of all religions (not just Catholicism) is pretty shit too. For example, I condemn fundamentalist Protestants/Muslims/Jews when adherents to those religions condemn - among other things - abortion and homosexuality (in just the same way that fundamental Catholicism does).

I agree with some of what Heracles has said - but not everything, chiefly because I think Bertrand Russell was a misogynist sod.

Finally, even though I have absolutely no sympathy with Daftpunk's political views, I can't understand why an earlier poster said "Oh, I knew DP would turn up on this thread." Of course she will turn up on a thread that discusses Catholicism. You may not agree with her (and I don't, personally), but she has every right to post on this thread.

waitingforathankyou;

You naivety is touching.

The catholic church offers "spiritual & moral" guidance, it's not their job to hand out condoms to half of Africa, (they're not stupid, they know the majority of them wouldn't see the light of day anyway)...

the church would rather focus on it's traditional teachings of fidelity...as the Pope said;

" The traditional teachings of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. "

The UK has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, contraception and sex education are freely available....so what's behind the statistics ?