Do as I say, not as I do - Page 2

Oh...is rape the only subject here? Is that your "line?" Thank you for proving my point, by the way.

Clinton WAS accused of rape.

And Senator Robert Byrd, considered the Senate's expert on the Constitution, in an interview said he believed Clinton had committed an impeachable offense, but that he would not vote to convict him because he was the leader of Byrd's party.

But there was not a full governmental institutional reaction to stopping an investigation into it that could have resulted in arrest and trial. The government doesn't systematically protect the wrong-doers the way the Catholic church does.

There are unfortunately people who gain positions of trust and abuse those positions. No one is infallible in finding these people before they do some damage. But it is important to take strong actions to protect the injured. The Catholic church has a structure that protects priests who force themselves on non-consenting adults and children, portraying the men as weak sinners who need to do penance and are not subject to the criminal laws of the land. It is a systematic chain of command that incubates a vile secrecy. Regarding the Irish scandals, I heard that children who had talked to their Bishop about the abuse were told to take a vow of silence. Protecting the church was more important than protecting the children.

I found this quote very interesting about the priorities of the church.
Indeed, Benedict holds celibacy so high that last year he excommunicated a Zambian priest, the Rev. Luciano Anzanga Mbewe, for being married. Mbewe now heads a breakaway sect of married Catholic priests in Uganda called the Catholic Apostolic National Church, according to The New York Times. "The creation of the splinter church underscored the increasingly vexing problem of enforcing celibacy for Roman Catholic priests in Africa, which has the world's fastest-growing Catholic population but where there have been several cases of priests living openly with women and fathering children," the Times wrote. One wonders at the priorities of a man who failed to defrock a priest in Wisconsin who molested hundreds of children but acted so decisively in the case of one who married a consenting adult.

I think we all expect politicians to be hypocrites, it comes with the job title..
the Catholic Church on the other hand...not so much though historically we should have learned it's not the purest of organizations, but people still have a lot of faith in the church...so when something like this comes out it's very shocking.
Especially because of the nature of the crimes, non clergy people get labeled as a sex offender for their entire life and are ostracized, it's one of the most offensive crimes that exists..and it's something you dont' expect even out of your worst enemy, let alone a bishop.

I must have missed where Clinton was accused of raping little boys. I thought he just had an inappropriate relationship with a consenting adult who was probably as eager to have a fling as Clinton himself.

Yes, the Catholic Church violations certainly are far more serious than some politician's fling or their less than honest behaviour IMO so I repeat, I don't see any correlation.

Actually, my continual point here has been that there are a lot of good organizations--maybe all of them--that have a few bad people in them. Policemen get arrested all the time for committing all sorts of crimes, but we don't condemn all the police.

A church is not a paradise of perfection, but rather a hospital trying to heal the sick.

And it is the natural response of any organization to try to protect itself. After all, if it's destroyed, it can no longer help anyone.

Try accusing a doctor of a misdeed to the AMA or any other such organization. Try accusing a lawyer of anything. The first reaction is to try to protect the organization by denying the claim. It's human nature, and it's the nature of any organization. The Catholic Church in the U.S. has paid very dearly for those actions, and it's beginning to look like the world church is about to have the same experience. You would think they would have learned about the ultimate futility of the denials in the U.S., but that's not the way organizations work.

I can even give you an example (if a pretty insignificant one). We make most of our deliveries in the middle of the night to the back of the store. We just swap out trailers. There's no one around. It's dark. We have trailers loaded with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of much-wanted goods. We're working with things that a single mistake could cause a very serious accident and injury or death of a driver. I've had a couple of scares with people driving by me very slowly while I'm working. And, we have problems with stores turning off their dock area lights.

We report every store that doesn't have their lights on. We've done it for months. It's helped in a few cases. But we HAVE had one driver mugged. I pointed out to our manager that if a driver is killed or seriously injured behind one of those stores, the first thing any lawyer is going to ask for is the records of those light reports.

He admitted I was right, but he said our company, like any other, is often reactive rather than proactive. Until something really happens, they can't believe it could happen.

After all...how would you like to be the Ford manager who said, "Yeah, we could spend the $17 per car to fix all the Pintos, but it will be cheaper just to pay out if we ever lose a lawsuit."

Or the Toyota managers who said, "We don't want to panic our customers. Maybe the problems are isolated enough that it won't become a big issue."

And there are lots of such examples, in every walk of life, every day.

The RIGHT thing for the Catholic Church to do would have been to start combing through their records and dealing proactively with every priest around the world who had been reported to have a problem with children (and not just little boys). But that's not what they did, and, when you know about human nature, that's a very unlikely course for them to follow without outside pressure, which they now have.

And look up Juanita Broaddrick.

Do a search on "police camden." Add the word "scandal" if you want to skip seeing the official links for their websites. It's a good example of there not being any good cops left.

There appears to be an update regarding the current pope's role in covering up abuse by its clerics:
AP EXCLUSIVE: Future pope stalled pedophile case
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100409/...e_church_abuse

I read a Newsweek article this afternoon (actually, two of them) that suggested a lack of women in leadership positions in the Catholic Church is part of the problem. The guys are just too insulated from the real world.

I think that argument has some merits. If so, I suppose it might apply to the Boy Scouts, too. Hmmmm?

As to the police deal, that depends on the department. Some, such as NYC or New Orleans (and, in times past, Houston) have a long record of covering up the misconduct of their officers.

So, my argument still stands. There might be an ideal method of dealing with problems, but not everyone is going to follow it.

I may be beating a dead horse here but I still don't see any correlation between a few bad cops having misconduct being covered up and the Catholic church covering up the abuse of little children.

There have been dishonest store clerks but I don't think we all assume that all store clerks are dishonest because of the few. I also don't believe that "we" are against all cops because there are some bad ones. At least I don't but that's just me.

NPR's "On The Media" show today had a really good piece on the subject. You can listen to it here:

http://www.onthemedia.org/

One thing they pointed out is that the Pope had a long reputation for a zero-tolerance policy, etc., but that these recent events have really tarnished that. It pointed out that he was a leader in settling lawsuits, and even met and apologized to many victims.

As is often the case with judges, a long record is often a bad thing, because there are so many opportunities for errors.