Anti-Catholic feelings

[StrictlyKatty]

I'm pretty exhuasted right now with all the Anti-Catholic feeling on MN

A week never seems to go by without a thread about how Catholics should all feels ashamed about abuse (which we all do!) and how the Catholic Church should disband, that all Priests are kiddy fiddlers etc

Then, which really drives me mad, people with their threads about how to fake religion to get into Catholic school

There is now a thread about how frigging funny it is to see the Pope on a condom. I do wonder how funny people would find Mohammad on a sauasge... not very is my bet! Why can't respect for peoples religion be extended to Catholics?

I just wish people would understand that while noone feels that the RC church doesn't have a lot to apologise for it is not 100% rotten, the Pope isn't a Nazi and not every Priest signed up to spend time alone with little boys

DH thinks I should rise above it, but it hurts me! It has just made me cry seeing all the horrible things people have said about the church today.
Am I alone

If you really think the cover-up of abuse doesn't happen in other institutions you might want to look at this:

www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=12249

I read that link with interest until I got to the bit about the BBC being controlled by Illuminati-Satanists and psychopaths.

It isn't an adequate defence of the catholic church, to point to other criminals.
In the case that you linked to, if it's true, and eventually comes out in the mainstream press, then people will have to resign. They may be protecting each other at the moment, but their power isnt boundless, they dont own a small country, or other peoples consciences.

Why cant you understand, that people are angry because the church is still being as secretive as they can get away with, is not changing the rules under which abuse was so likely to happen, and people who have concealed crimes arent resigning?

Wannabe if my views are so removed from normality why do I find myself at mass with nearly 300 every week? Why do I find myself part of a group of over 1 billion people?

well, if they all think as you do that paedophile priests should be sheltered and that sexual abuse within the church should be kept quiet while the church gathers its "evidence" then I think you have your answer as to why there is such anti-catholic feeling.

However I suspect - would like to hope in fact that most don't think in that way.

wannabe, I think that is a bit unfair...ordinary catholics dont want to shelter criminals - they just dont seem to be taking the action against their church that is needed!

StrictlyKatty,

You would be kind to yourself to abandon this thread, really. You are exposing yourself to more and more hurt, willingly throwing yourself among wolves. What good would it do to you to expose yourself to names like ' paedo sympathizer', directed at you personally, anyway, don't let it stick in your mind.
But I know it is tempting to read/post and maybe you are thicker skinned that I think, so you judge.

What is happening in the church now was foretold, often with great accuracy in many approved or some not yet but still popular private revelations.
I followed 'True Life in God'since early nineties , am still reeling with the shock how the events are unfolding before my eyes. It all hurts like hell sometimes but we should not be surprised or say we were not warned. Obviously, no Catholic is obliged to believe in private revelations, I, like many of my friends, happen to have interest and find some very believable and comforting.

The church is going through purification, it will emerge better, holier, stronger.
The paedophiles, the child beaters will be gone. Also, people who stayed in the church, considered themselves catholic but at heart opposed many of its teachings, they will go.
People of lukewarm faith will leave as well.

The good will faithful, they will stay . This can't be bad for the church, can it, we just have to suffer through.

The church hierarchy apologized many many times over, have been for years now. Do people who say opposite actually follow every speech, document, letter issued on the matter over years, really ?

The child safety measures, VERY strict have been implemented for years now. My two sons were taking year long first communion classes 7 and 5 years ago. They were never at any point allowed to be in the room with one teacher only, always at least two adults, and we are talking ordinary women , not even priests. There was a poster displayed in church with the first communion children photographs ( faces only) and we were not allowed to put their names underneath, which I thought was OTT but shows how seriously the safety is taken these days.

By the way, by many posters' reasoning here, shouldn't you be on the streets protesting against abhorrently lenient sentences given to convicted paedophiles, against the fact they are pretty soon given a second chance of life in community, against the ease of how they can disappear, assume new names and reoffend ( Peter Tobin ?). Are you tearing up your British passports yet ?

No child within the Catholic

"ordinary catholics dont want to shelter criminals - they just dont seem to be taking the action against their church
that is needed!" No you're right, ordinary catholics mostly don't. But the op has expressed several times on this thread that she supports the actions that the church took in hiding the abuse.

OOPs, ignore the last line, typing error.

dm, but this isn't about what is going on now. It's about what went on back then, and those, including the now pope, who covered it up.

The man that is head of the catholic church covered up child sex abuse - how can he possibly still be considered to be appropriate for the job?

"people who stayed in the church, considered themselves catholic but at heart opposed many of its
teachings, they will go." Given that the bible teaches us to do unto others and not to bring harm to others, shouldn't it therefore be assumed that those who covered up sexual abuse could be considered to be "opposing many of its teachings" and therefore should they not go?

Well, wannaBe, if many of these priests and members of the Church hierarchy were to go, who would replace them?
Vocations are down, and it doesn't surprise me. Who would want to be a priest nowadays with the reputation the Catholic Church has?

It depends if the cover was done with malicious intent or with tragically misguided good intentions. Practically all cover ups happened at the time when it was not widely known that paedophiles will almost certainly go on to reoffend. The whole paedophilia was more less taboo subject, in secular world as well. We are all even now learning how to deal with all this horrible stuff. Nothing short of complete permanent castration or keeping them locked up for ever will give us confidence that they will not damage another child.

Yes, there should be no secrecy, straightforward immediate cooperation with secular law should be a norm, this is what is going to happen now, we have learned.

Marjorie, vocations are down in some parts of the world and up in others.
It is possible that in a few years time the celibacy will be relaxed/abolished. It has never been a Catholic dogma,just a current policy, it can change any time. I personally, too, would probably like to see celibacy as a choice. Not because I believe it leads to paedophilia, as I absolutely don't, but some priests find loneliness really hard going.

Some things are changing all the times in the church, girls are now allowed to serve at the altar, lay people, men and women, are allowed to distribute communion, married man are allowed to become deacons with many duties which belonged to priests only before. All these things were hard to imagine when I was growing up.

thank goodness for DaisyMeadow and Chandra.
some reasonable voices on here.

Bit difficult to be reasonable when your childhood has been taken from you.
Bit difficult to be reasonable when you've been interfered with, had the crap beaten out of you, kicked, punched, sexually abused by priests and nuns, eaten your own vomit.

Yeh, bit difficult that.

but paedophilia has always been a crime.

So even if it wasn't known that abusers would go on to reoffend, the offenders should still have been prosicuted at the time, by the justice system, not moved on and the alagations swept under the carpet.

Even if they asked for forgiveness in confession, it was not for the church to absolve them.

So no, I can't see how this could have been done with the best intentions, given there were already victims of these crimes.

The only way the catholic church will ever recover is if there is total reform, and that should include the pope's resignation and the resignation of anyone else who was at all involved.

Marjoriew

Ok, I personally give you a dispense to be unreasonable on this thread if this is what happened to you. If anyone can be excused, it is you.
Still, you surely are capable to recognize that those monstrous perpetrators behaved absolutely contrary to their church's teachings and there were and are literally millions of Catholics and yes, even priests and nuns, who would never ever do such things.

Well, DaisyMeadow, it's like this.
When myself and the thousands of other children were suffering as we did, it didn't actually occur to us that these perpetrators were behaving contrary to their church's teachings. And unfortunately, there wasn't one single nun in the whole of the 15 years I was in care who was even basically civil to me.
We just laid in bed at night waiting for one of the nuns to come round and inspect us - firstly to see if we had wet the bed, and secondly to ensure that our arms were crossed demurely across our chests [ just in case we were doing anything untoward with our hands, if you see what I mean]. Failure to do so would result in being dragged out of bed by the hair and bashed to within an inch of your life.
All we every prayed for was the day the Mother Superior would come and tell you that you were now 15 and it was time to go.

"I see what you are saying, but I think you are condoning it, simply by not insisting on change, and by carrying on going to church and paying your dues."

Nightynight, but what do you know about me? that's the problem: assuming everyone acts the same.

I don't pay "my" dues, the church has enough money already and if there weren't for particular things, I would have the same free choice to put money towards it as I have to buy a cow from Oxfam.

How do you know a lot of catholics do not insist on change? there are 100s of movements around the world pulling the church in every sort of directions, which is great and makes the church evolve. Change takes time though.

But just remember that for most people that practice a religion, it is all about contact with a God, so you can be highly disenchanted with the institution but that doesn't mean the whole of the church's principles and teachings are wrong.

I'm not for one minute saying that there haven't been abusers in religious organisations other than the Catholic church...........

but what I can't understand is that so many ordained people within the Catholic church have been shown to have known of various abuse/abusers but the same people all went along with the reasoning that the good name/reputation of the Catholic church was more important.

I can't understand how their Christian faith was weaker than their support for the Catholic church. Catholicism is Christianity, no? For evil to triumph all that is necessary is for good men to stand by and do nothing which seems to have been the case in the Catholic church in respect of the abuse cases now seeing the light of day.

If you profess to be a Christian you'll know the 10 commandments and I think we Catholics need to re-visit the one about having no other gods. Many appointed ministers within the church appear to have placed the Catholic church as an organisation on a pedestal higher than than the god to be worshipped and whose teachings are to be followed.

The Catholic church needs a grass roots revolt but because of the way it is run it seems unlikely to happen, particularly if we see the Catholic church's teachings as needing to be blindly followed as a demonstration of our faith. I see the turning a blind eye/pick and mix the teachings you can agree with option to remaining a Catholic as potentially dangerous. We choose to ignore the pronouncements about the efficacy of condoms and use them anyway, whereas Catholics in the third world countries are suffering very high levels of aids as they do not have the education/information that we do and they suffer as a consequence. Are we good people standing by letting bad things happen to others because it is important that the Catholic church goes unquestioned over its pronouncements from on high ?

I don't have anti-Catholic feelings but I have ever growing unease at supporting the Catholic church as an organisation.

I certainly agree that we need to be more challenging of authority.

Our diocese has a good record on child protection, and has done for some years. Our parish is particularly rigorous in its procedures. But I found out something that sounded like bad practice to me (to do with a course the diocese were running) and I wasn't happy.

So I emailed the bishop himself directly on Sat. night, getting his name from the diocesan website. He replied personally at 8.55am on the Monday morning and said he'd look into it.

I actually told him that I needed to know, when I come on to forums like this and defend his diocese (not the Church as a whole, please note), that I have my facts absolutely right.

I think Catholic women are becoming more ballsy.

StrictlyKatty, as I said in earlier posts, I'm not Catholic, but I do think there is a lot of mis-understanding, and ill speak of the Catholic faith on Mumsnet and in the media.

There is so much which is good about the Catholic church. There are many aspects which I adore, and are happy for my children to be involved with.

However, I think the Pope has made grave mistakes, as have others within the hierarchy of the church. Obviously there are people who have been abused, and the situation has been handled incredibly badly. Yes, I think heads should roll.

'For evil to triumph all that is necessary is for good men to stand by and do nothing'

sitdownpleasegeorge, spot on quote

I will be the first to put my hand up to be guilty of just that many times over, well, if I dare to call myself a 'good woman'...which is debatable.

It's important to distinguish between several different groups here.

MOST Catholics will be ordinary people who go to church on Sunday and are horrified at the news that their church was involved in this and in covering it up.

Now I have said before in other threads that by going to church as usual and saying nothing they in effect are supporting the church in what it's doing. That's NOT the same as saying it's their fault.

If that group were protesting loudly it would help so I'm not terribly happy that most are not, but I don't blame THEM for the abuse.

Now you have the actual abusers who need to be brought to justice and those who conspired to cover up and protect them. They need to be dealt with by the police. That includes the pope and he can argue his case in court like anyone else.

There is another group. Those Catholics who were not involved, but who are openly saying in threads like this that the church has the right to cover it up. That I find despicable and no better than those who DID cover it up.

onagar,
"Now I have said before in other threads that by going to church as usual and saying nothing they in effect are supporting the church in what it's doing"

well i haven't been to church since Easter sunday, mixture of laziness and unease as i work this through in my head.

but what EXACTLY do you suggest i do?
take my kids out of school where they are very happy?
start a riot?
the 3 priests who my family know personally are all disgusted at the whole thing, and off the record will tell you they are not happy generally "with Rome", not just since the child abuse scandal broke, but for years. thinking they are out of date and not doing the church much good in this century.

but tell me what we are supposed to do about it besides not attending mass.... and that is about a period of being close to God, reflecting, calmness, not actually "supporting the catholic church"

sorry, i know i am not expressing myself well but really struggling with all this.

is anyone really saying the church has the right to cover it up?

hands up if you are. i haven't read this on this thread.