The "But they wanted it" site wanted to install something on my computer. "Not without K-Y" I told it.
That may be how the NYT views his role. But Douthat, like Donohue but not quite as crazily, views at least part of his role as defending the Catholic Church (and faith). He's very much a culture warrior conservative, and comes at the culture war from a conservative Catholic viewpoint. The column didn't surprise me at all.
Bërubë? All ths time I didn't realize he was Albanian.
Spanish translation help on this:
Original: hay adolescentes de 13 años que son menores y están perfectamente de acuerdo y además, deseándolo, incluso si te descuidas te provocan
Article linked by neb reads:
There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what's more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you
Another article has it:
There are adolescents of thirteen years of age who are minors and are totally in agreement and furthermore desire it. Even if you take care they provoke you.
Which is correct between 'take care" and "careless". Both despicable and telling, of course.
This is America. If you want diacritical marks in your name badly enough, you can have them, but don't think you can dictate which diacritical marks you'll get.
4: Some random dictionary says "careless."
I oppose all diacritical remarks as foreign intrusions on the purity of the English language.
As I choose to understand it, Douthat's role is to ensure that when the NYT goes behind a paywall, I won't miss reading it.
"Si te descuidas" is basically " if you let your guard down" idiomatically.
This bastard makes me so violently angry that for the first time in my life I'm grateful I'm too disabled to jump on a plane to New York and hunt him down and slice him up slowly.
Because I fucking would. How dare the NYT publish this stuff? How fucking dare they?
@#4 JC Stormcrow
"careless" is a the better translation.
The verb is "descuidarse" (to be careless, to not watch yourself).
My colloquial translation might be "and if you don't watch yourself, they even provoke you."
The permissive sexual culture that prevailed everywhere, seminaries included, during the silly season of the '70s deserves a share of the blame, as does that era's overemphasis on therapy.
I think the take of many of the feminist blogs on this particular line is right on: Douthat doesn't think for a second about the concept of consent.
12: You know, it's something I never would have noticed on my own, but the feminist blogs are completely right on this -- the concept of consent seems to rarely enter the conservative mind when it comes to topic of sex.
Yeah, what I just realized now is that it goes both ways. They don't appreciate that consent makes some sex acts ok AND they don't see that a lack of consent is what makes other sex acts very very wrong.
It's a disturbing disconnect to run into, when you figure out that's what's making a conversation run off the rails.
You can see it even in that weird Limbaugh riff comparing waterboarding to fraternity hazing. If only those prisoners had just skipped freshman rush.
You have to have a developed sense that other people are people before you can empathize with them. Or believe that they can hold a mental state from which to consent.
(Was that too dismissive? It is my best guess.)
I think the waterboarding case is different than the sex case. For liberals, the cornerstone of sexual ethics is consent. For conservatives, the cornerstone is marriage.
The waterboarding case is a straightforward lack of empathy for the perceived other. Megan is right about that one.
My experience with socially conservative sexual ethics is that they're pretty much just lists: forbidden, permitted, obligatory. Everything on the forbidden list is pretty much equally bad, because it's forbidden, duh. There's theorizing within the community about why things are on the various lists, and there's ideology behind what's on the various lists, but the main thing for adherents is just the lists.
But why doesn't their analogy work? Because (in some sense) fraternity pledges consent, and prisoners don't.
I remember noticing the consent issue back in the nineties, talking to people who put Anita Hill and Monica Lewinsky in the same category, which completely blew my mind. While Clinton's behavior was certainly non-optimal, the idea that hassling someone who didn't want you to was the same offense as having a consensual affair with someone who pursued you seemed utterly incomprehensible to me.
21: I was thinking more of the motivation for the argument than the argument itself.
Also, the consent issue in waterboarding and frat hazing is complicated. If you are being waterboarded at gitmo, the problem isn't just that you didn't consent, it is that you have absolutely zero reason to believe that the interrogator isn't going to kill you. When reporters and such not consent to be waterboarded, they trust that they aren't going to die, which changes the experience.
Also, frat hazing can be pretty fucking awful, even if it is consensual. The kid who died of water intoxication at SUNY Purchase may have drunk all that water voluntarily, but that doesn't make it right.
To be sure, the permissive sexual ethos of the 1970s was also a bit fuzzy on the notion of consent, as we talked about when Roman Polanski came up.
But I must say that I never thought that the Church would try to invoke the "hey, it was the swinging 70s" defense.
It's amazing that so many folks are willing to complete the sentence "it was OK to cover up the rape of children because________"
It's amazing that so many folks are willing to complete the sentence "it was OK to cover up the rape of children because________"
It's amazing that so many folks are willing to complete the sentence "it was OK to cover up the rape of children because________"
Does anyone really say "it was OK"?
Maybe not, but how about "necessary" or "advisable".
I thought it was less about excusing the actions and more about complaining that all these meanies keep picking on the poor little church.
29: oh, certainly, there's been too much of that.
Well, I view acquiesence in the cover up as a tacit approval, and plenty of folks are willing to excuse the cover up, but I see your point. Kotsko in neb's link gets at what I was trying to say better -- if your reaction is "yes, that was bad, but..." then something is wrong with you.
Does anyone really say "it was OK"?
Yes.
It often takes the form of "Times were different," or "That's just how things were handled," or "It wasn't clear what their responsibilities were."
Sometimes I wonder whether the people saying these things think it is actually *worse* to have meanie newspaper writers claiming you should have done something than to have actually failed to do something. It does illustrate pretty starkly a worldview in which your own conscience plays a small role, which I guess goes along with a basic authoritarian mindset.
"It was OK to cover up the rape of children because the offenders had confessed, repented, and received absolution from the architect of not only the entire universe, but of morality itself. Furthermore, the intervention God, through his one true Church, has healed the disorder of these men, so they no longer pose a danger to children. Revelation would not undo the harm already done, but would damage the reputation of the Church, creating an opening for the Father of Lies to draw innocent souls into his orbit, condemning them to eternal suffering. Compared to the eternal miseries of those thus mislead the temporal miseries of the victims pale into insignificance."
I suspect that this line of reasoning is very close to that actually followed by the people involved. I also suspect, uncharitable bastard that I am, that some nontrivial fraction of the protectors of child rapists were concerned about the possible revelation of their own sexual activities, both consensual and not.
Well, the world of the priesthood is not our own, of course. It's sequestered from our popular culture, it's a world that is deeply introspective and infused with norms that seem bizarre to many outsiders. So some of the criticism is, somewhat, unfair. What happened in the church is not the same thing as sexual abuse that would occur at, say, a secular school or day care. The better parallel would be pederasty in ancient greece. We have every right to criticize the behavior, and the culture that produced it, but to apply labels like "evil" or "monster" to individual priests who are products of that culture is a misapplication of value judgments across cultural barriers.
it was OK to cover up the rape of children because
...the Seventies made the rapists do it.
We've come full circle.
Re: 29, 30
It really doesn't seem that Douthat is engaged in that, though. He's also not using the "permissive 70s" bit as an excuse for the behavior; he's using it as a moral explanation for what went wrong (viz., it was this normatively bad situation that caused the morally bad behavior).
The main problem, as noted, is that he can't imagine a world in which both Studio 54 exists and minors don't get raped by priests as a matter of course.
You know, the Catholic Church may still be built around the norms and worldview of Imperial Rome, but it exists in the 21st century, and it is about damn time that it acknowledge that equality, democracy and rule of law aren't passing fads that it is going to outlast like that weird time everyone thought men should wear lace stockings.
Something similar to this scandal is actually happening in the Boy Scouts, and you know what, the people who run the organization are in court defending themselves against lawsuits. They don't get to claim that their own internal systems of justice take precedent. They don't get to claim to be a sovereign nation. You can't use religion to avoid being held accountable for covering up a crime.
We have every right to criticize the behavior, and the culture that produced it, but to apply labels like "evil" or "monster" to individual priests who are products of that culture is a misapplication of value judgments across cultural barriers.
Brock, with all due respect, are you insane?
Just for kicks, let's swap out "child rape" for "murder." Let's say that the church had an internal process for dealing with murder, which did not include reporting it to law enforcement. Would you be okay with calling the individual decision to abide by that process "evil" or "monstrous"?
33: The recently leaked letter by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in fact does site "The good of the universal church" as the reason not to defrock a California priest.
I thought 34 was tongue-in-cheek, but I'm never sure with Brock.
I wasn't sure if Brock was serious or not, either, so I didn't address 37 to him. My comment was something that I've been thinking for several days now. It applies to Brock's comment (no, priests do not live in a different world) but it is really a more general complaint.
I thought 34 was tongue-in-cheek
I really hope so. I kept rereading it hoping I could detect sarcasm.
39: Indeed, and the details of that case are shocking even in comparison to others. The priest in question sounds like an extremely dangerous predator who was basically unchecked. The diocese was practically begging the Vatican to have him defrocked, which he himself had requested, and Ratzinger's response was basically to urge caution because of the effect a defrocking might have on the priesthood as a whole.
Not just any de-frocking. De-frocking a young priest, which is such an unusual event it would draw attention. Can't have that.
Yeah, I didn't really understand that part. Is defrocking an old priest a normal thing to do?
Also, dude was 38. I guess that's young for a priest, but still.
"Defrocking" itself sounds kinky, but in a more fun, playful way. Like something you would do to with your dirndl.
Just for kicks, let's swap out "child rape" for "murder." Let's say that the church had an internal process for dealing with murder, which did not include reporting it to law enforcement. Would you be okay with calling the individual decision to abide by that process "evil" or "monstrous"?
I think the rationale in #33 applies just as much to that.
(no, priests do not live in a different world)
They don't get to claim that their own internal systems of justice take precedent. They don't get to claim to be a sovereign nation. You can't use religion to avoid being held accountable for covering up a crime.
Thomas Beckett died for what?
Look, I have tried to stay away from this. But imagine the Church, with its internal system of justice, did not protect molesting priests, but burned them over a slow fire instead.
Y'all would not be satisfied. You need to subsume everything, control every fucking thing, every fucking thought. It must be unthinkable that any action or reaction can be outside of the democratic liberal hegemony, except by conditional permission of that hegemony.
Liberalism is a totalitarianism
What precisely is defrocking, is it different from simply being taken out of the priesthood? Because I didn't have the impression that the latter was that public or that unusual -- it happened to M's uncle, for example.
It wasn't for any sex-related reasons, mind you -- he had a disagreement with the church over Vatican II, and refused to toe the new doctrinal line. He now runs a small church out of his living room, where he holds mass in Latin and the congregants eat the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ.
He's kind of a weird guy. M was watching Invictus over at his house on Easter, and his uncle was moved to say that he disliked Nelson Mandela, on the grounds that Mandela was "progressive." In his defense, I don't actually think he's a racist -- I think he just dislikes "progress" in all its forms.
45: Yeah, I didn't really understand that part. Is defrocking an old priest a normal thing to do?
I think the idea was that if the matter was kept within the church for long enough, the statute of limitations would run out.
"Sanctuary!" cried Quasimodo.
I don't know, is lawyer-client privilege & the marriage vow protected in court while the confessional is not? That would be typical.
Everything under our law bitches, there can no other law, no other justice than our justice, the justice of the state.
I think the idea was that if the matter was kept within the church for long enough, the statute of limitations would run out.
That does in fact seem to be what happened, so yeah, maybe that was the plan.
"it was OK to cover up the rape of children because________"
...it is good to have a variety of systems of justice within one's borders.
The tattered remnants of this is what the Merciful Church is trying to protect, a vague idea that the House of God is not just another arm, appendage of King and State.
Not that I actually give a fuck.
Bob, Bob, you are off your game. You totally had be goaded with your first two paragraphs. I was going to reply that I wasn't saying that state law always trumps cannon law. I would have gone on at length.
But when you say that I don't believe anything should be outside liberal hegemony, and that liberalism is totalitarianism, I mean, shit. Suddenly I know the game you are playing. I didn't read Liberal Fascism and I'm not going to take the time to reply to you.
48 is quite possibly the greatest comment in the history of Unfogged. Or at least the recent history.
They don't get to claim that their own internal systems of justice take precedent. They don't get to claim to be a sovereign nation. You can't use religion to avoid being held accountable for covering up a crime.
Look the claim of the Church of the right or need to protect a Guatemalan refugee or a woman protecting her children from an abusive husband who has been granted custody is not a democratic or liberal claim. It is commanded of them. It is not up for a vote.
You can my comparisons are odious, but at least I realize it is not my fucking call as to who the Church shall show mercy to to. I judge the molester, I do not judge the Church. I do not demand that the Church become a secular democracy.
Close the Church down. Whatever. Meanwhile, a pox on both your houses
I thought 34 was pretty obvious sarcasm. Maybe it's time to revisit the ban on emoticons.
I think mcmanus misses the healthcare debate.
It's okay to be a bit wistful, bob.
Close the Church down.
Don't mind if I do!
59: From any other commenter, maybe.
I don't usually use so many qualifiers in my sarcarsm. Must be my roots in broad theatrical comedy.
They don't get to claim that their own internal systems of justice take precedent.
WTF? The commandments of God do not take precedent over the whims and will of the state?
Of course they do as do we all. Whatever our foundation of personal conscience, it must take precedent over social convention and secular law.
This is how we get Greenwald vs Kerr arguing over "what is the real really real law" ad infinitum.
I do not torture. I do not imprison innocent people. Fuck whatever the law says.
bob, you make a compelling argument for Sharia law.
Unfortunately bob, health care reform actually mandates that you imprison people in your basement in order to waterboard them. You may not like it, but it's the only way to keep costs down.
bob has as point, which point does not particularly absolve the church of its obvious responsibility to act in accordance with its own precepts. Which it clearly has not done.
Maybe it's time to revisit the ban on emoticons.
There's no level of misunderstanding, hurt and turmoil that would justify that.
I've never understood the level of animosity toward emoticons that some people seem to have. I find them pretty useful in a text-based medium where expressing tone is difficult.
So the priest hangs last the procedural liberal from the guts of the last believer in a civil society that adheres to secular norms, and then the revolution is complete?
66:HCR mandated that we make Wellpoint as "too-big-to-fail" as Goldman-Sachs and BofA. You will understand what that means in maybe 15 years.
Been reading Yggles on financial reform the last coupla days?
bob, I thought you were pro-Robespierre. Didn't he hate the Church, or do I have my revolutionaries mixed up?
From any other commenter, maybe.
Huh. Not from me, because I'm suspected to be an apologist for child rape? Or... what?
74: Because you're so good at trolling that a person has trouble sometimes telling whether you really mean it. (I'm the same way.)
No, just more likely than most to produce the occasional unexpected opinion.
Look, it is one thing to say molesters should be prosecuted. It is quite another to tell a private organization what it should or should not do, should and should not believe, above and beyond the dictates of the law.
The Church can have its internal systems of justice.
You can prosecute Bishops, Cardinals, and the freaking Pope for aiding and abetting child rape.
But the tone, the main subject of dispute, has been about how the Church should decide to dispense Its mercy. I consider that off limits.
77.Last: Really? I thought the tone was to condemn institutional decisions that allow serial molesters continued access to vulnerable children.
73:My feelings about the Roman Catholic Church are complicated.
Obviously, I consider this question as pertaining to my views on personal conscience and obedience to secular law. And Revolution.
God I love Bob. Let's take this thing to eleven! Thomas Becket died for the right to protect santuary islands of child rape is pretty amazingly awesome.
I know, why respond, but check out Canon 22 of the Canon Law The Church has long since agreed -- like, since the middle ages -- that it's members are also subject to civil law except when it's absolutely clear that it's contrary to divine law. And no, the right to child rape is not protected by divine law.
Emoticons open the doorway to Unfunny, and Be Funny is the first law.
78:There is a difference between the decisions made, and the process by which those decisions are arrived at.
The rules for decision-making, so to speak.
The problem I have with liberalism is that it wants me to obey the law because it is the law, because my neighbors tell me to obey. Liberalism wants me to totally internalize that submission and call it freedom.
Even a MLK or Mandela is supposed to break the law and "take the consequences" as if there isn't a contradiction in doing so. Mostly this is a political tactic, not a principle. Harriet Tubman didn't turn herself in.
I don't know, for some reason it is necessary to my identity to assert a personal domain outside the law. YMMV.
80: However, I think bob is arguing against a seeming general call for ditching altogether the "except when it's absolutely clear that it's contrary to divine law" part. I believe bob is saying that that's overkill.
I doubt bob's arguing that the sheltering and continued enabling of child molesters is cool. I could be wrong.
I like it when people explain mcmanus's arguments, like he's making sense, somehow. If we work together, we can make bob not a troll anymore! I just know it!
80:So should the Church give the asylum seeker back to the junta, for the crime of satirizing El Presidente?
Look, I have reservations about the rise of the Nation-State, and the Church's gradual acquiescence to it.
There are a lot less burnings, but also a lot less heresy against prevailing wisdom, especially since the Enlightenment.
the main subject of dispute, has been about how the Church should decide to dispense Its mercy. I
Not at all. My main gripe in 37 was precisely about how the church relates to the rest of the world, not about how it dispenses divine forgiveness or believes divine forgiveness to be dispensed, or whatever.
Personally, I think in the end we will all be Buddhas, even the child molesters. The point is that institutions the size of the Catholic Church need to be transparent to the rest of the world.
87.last: Tangential to your point, there weren't as many burnings as people commonly think. A lot of the Inquisition, at least in Spain, was a lot of "No, you have to stop that minor [Jewish/Muslim] practice your grandma did. Now go say three Hails Mary and call me next Sunday."
Not to minimize it all or suggest there was no violence. There certainly was.
Some disturbing parallels in this story:
In a sex abuse scandal that some victims compare to what happened in the Catholic Church, at least 36 swimming coaches have been banned for life by the USA Swimming organization over the last 10 years because of sexual misconduct with teenagers they coached....
Ken Stopkotte, named Indiana High School Boys Swimming and Diving State Coach of the year for 2009, said the problem is pervasive and has been going on his entire 27 years in coaching.
"It's something that coaches talk about all the time," Stopkotte told ABC News.
The executive director of USA Swimming, Chuck Wielgus, acknowledged the problem, but said "It's "It's not nearly as serious in USA Swimming as it might be in the rest of society."
"I don't want to be the one to sit here and say 36 is not too many, one is too many, but this is not just a problem that's isolated to one sport," said Wielgus.
In some cases, the swimming coaches found to have been sexual predators were able to move from town to town, one step ahead of police and angry victims and their parents.
"We have a system that does not encourage the reporting," said Bob Allard, a San Jose, CA lawyer representing sex abuse victims suing USA Swimming.
King's lawyer, Jamie Harley, said some of the responsibility belongs to the swimmers' parents whose ambition for their children blinded them to the problem.
"I think Mr. King bears enormous responsibility here, But I think the parents were not minding the store," she said. "I think had they been minding the store - had they been watching what's going on with their own children this opportunity never could have presented itself."....
"We want to have the gold standard and I think we do an awesome job," said USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus. "I don't think we're perfect.
Wielgus says the local swim clubs, not the national organization, bear the responsibility to check the full backgrounds of swimming coaches they hire.
He said the 36 coaches banned by the organization over the last ten years were only a tiny fraction of the organization's 12,000 coaches in that time period.
"Thirty six does seem like a whole lot. A hundred is even more. Five hundred is even more," he told correspondent Brian Ross.
Asked if he had apologized to any of the young teen victims, Wielgus responded, "You feel I need to apologize to them?"
86: It's not always easy. The fact is, though, that the legitimacy of the law is a question. I don't exactly think that the Church is a more legitimate authority than the state; I'm uneasy with bob's sometime suggestions here that that might be the case. I'd rather hear about conscience, and the church fails there just as often as does the state.
Emoticons open the doorway to Unfunny, and Be Funny is the first law.
89: Well, in any repression, there is the daily harassment and then the big demonstrations of power.
93: Right. I didn't mean to suggest it wasn't purporting to control. Just a minor historical twitch I have when people say "Inquisition-->Burning!" It was a much more nuanced system of social control than simply the cunning use of fire.
85 -- no, just a boring regular lawyer, but I did once have an academic interest in canon law. Really, Bob couldn't be more wrong about there being some kind of fundamental conflict between the church and the rule of law -- so much of our modern concept of law comes straight out of legal concepts developed by the Church.
And in case some actual medievalist comes by, I know that there's more to the story than my previous comment above. But the idea that even priests would have immunity from civil law for things like child rape is really contrary to really longstanding church tradition and law.
And you know why protecting child rape is differentthan the right of sanctuary invoked to protect refugees? Because those are different things! And, you know, the church and other people, including the state, have laws and ways of figuring that out!
And
I seem to have inadvertently cut from 90 any excerpt of what exactly was going on. Suffice to say a lot of it was not consensual.
The Church got Halford and burned him!
95:Really, Bob couldn't be more wrong about there being some kind of fundamental conflict between the church and the rule of law
Coulda fooled me the last few weeks. Also abortion, contraception, death penalty, unjust wars, racial discrimination, economic injustice.
Now the Church may not often require that unjust laws be disobeyed, but I do think that it claims a moral precedence to secular law, or the right to determine the justness of a law for itself.
But whadda I know. You are the expert.
90: Come on, Brock. Plaintiffs' lawyers are trying to beef up their case against an organization that might have more money than the imprisoned former coaches do by linking their lawsuit to the church scandals and you're buying it?
If I respect the rule of the Catholic church I must also respect Sharia law. I can't choose just one. Thus, the correct action is to reject both and have only secular, liberal, process law. Anything else is wrong.
I am what Bob hates.
Where did 99 come from? That article was the first I've heard of this, so I'm not sure it's wrong, exactly, but there's only one quote in there that's from a plaintiff's lawyer.
IMO your bullshit detector just didn't seem to be working very well. There's nothing in that article to justify sweeping claims about widespread sex abuse problems among swimming coaches, and plenty to suggest that a credulous reporter was pushing plaintiffs' lawyers' spin. But maybe I'm just unduly cynical in my old age.
I agree with Nathan personally, but I can't quite bring myself to say that everyone else must. This is difficult fucking territory. We can't dictate that there may no theologically based law anywhere, anyplace. It would be frickin' joke to claim that secular law is somehow cleansed in the first place.
This is way, way off-topic from the question of child molestation in the Catholic church, of course, which is condemnable on all fronts, according to church law as well.
You know what's sad? An appeal to the higher authority of the Church of Satan actually totally gets the priests off the hook.
This is difficult fucking territory.
It is? Kid pokin': bad! Boom, nailed it (to the cross).
The legitimacy of conversion is always a tricky issue, including when you're talking about conversion to secular law. Do you admit the ability of others to exist in their own unconnected sphere, as incorrect as you believe their behavior to be? All bets are off when spheres overlap.
100:I am what Bob hates.
Not you, but your belief that your particular preferred process is the only possible method of legitimation.
Which is what the Church and Sharia also believe.
We can't dictate that there may no theologically based law anywhere, anyplace.
I didn't see that as what Nathan said, exactly. I mean, yes, he's rejecting theologically based law. But saying that it's the wrong choice seems different from dictating to others that they may not make the choice.
bob mcmanus: objectively pro-child-rape.
Well, the Catholic, Sharia, and secular law all have opinions on some of the same subjects, and one must be supreme. I'm going to go with the one that doesn't rely on a cranky sky-deity.
People can certainly submit themselves to other sets of rules, whether clerical or the People's Court, but those can't exist in parallel to secular law, only subservient to it.
109: Well, except in other countries that choose to make religious law dominant. I mean, I think this is completely the wrong choice, but I'm with parsimon that people should be free to govern themselves that way if they choose. If that's her point.
And 108 was over-the-top troll-prodding. Sorry. Bored and trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to catch an early train in the morning. I should go find something better to do.
I DESPISE YOU! I DESPISE YOUR LAWS, YOUR FALSE GOD, YOUR FORCE-PROPPED AUTHORITY: HANG ME FOR IT!
This is the weirdest conversation. "It's so complicated! Sanctuary and political oppression! Liberal fascism!"
The question of whether or not to protect perpetrators of sexual crimes against children is not particularly difficult.
This is the weirdest conversation.
Yeah, I think people (including me!) may have been willfully taking bob at his word out of boredom.
The question of whether or not to protect perpetrators of sexual crimes against children is not particularly difficult
Nope, which makes it boring, so we're generalizing.
"Hey, do you approve of child rape?" "Nope!" "Me neither!"
That's pretty much the end of that conversation.
Ah, but emdash, that's where you're wrong. You see [ INSERT LAUGHABLE NONSENSE AT WEARYING, INCOMPREHENSIBLE LENGTH ]. Who are we to judge?
Bored and trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to catch an early train in the morning.
A big net?
Exactly what is the issue? Bob is getting traction by invoking a broad idea about the relationship between systems of law that sounds plausible, but he's not explaining the import of that principle. Should Pope Ratz have resisted defrocking this child molester on the grounds that it would make the church look bad? If that is the intended practical implication, then it clearly doesn't follow.
Well, except in other countries that choose to make religious law dominant. I mean, I think this is completely the wrong choice, but I'm with parsimon that people should be free to govern themselves that way if they choose. If that's her point.
That's interesting. I assume you'd only apply this on a country-by-country basis, right? (I.e., you'd object if Tom Monaghan wanted to ban homosexuality and abortion in Ave Maria--because that violates our nation's laws, i.e., the was we as a people have chosen to govern ourselves.) But I'm not sure why intrinsic weight should be given to the nation-state in this calculation. These sorts of decisions could be pushed down to ever township, if we wanted to do things that way.
||
Unrelatedly, should I be using my family-heirloom sample of trinitite (embedded in a plastic disc) as a drink coaster, or keeping it farther away from myself? I haven't had an opportunity to check it out with a Geiger counter.
|>
I thought 34 was pretty obvious sarcasm.
Phew. I apologize for misreading you, Brock. I blame my 13-hour work day.
Maybe it's time to revisit the ban on emoticons.
Now that's just crazy talk. Allow one emoticon and pretty soon people are using them as shorthand for everything, and becoming too lazy to actually write clearly. It's a slippery slope.
The question of whether or not to protect perpetrators of sexual crimes against children is not particularly difficult.
If I were more awake, I could make a pretty good run at devil's advocate here. As it is, I'll just say that in my observation, some people seem to find it rather difficult to decide whether to prioritize reporting child rape above keeping their jobs, avoiding bad public relations, and the social fallout that comes from accusing a "nice" person.
I'll be in Rome soon, does anybody know where I can go for some good young-boy-fucking? Is it on the Vatican tour? Are there "coffee houses", like for weed in Amsterdam?
I also thought the thing about emoticons was pretty obvious sarcasm.
12: Yes, I did realize you were joking. I kind of had Teo's 70 in mind given my semi-serious response.
Sorry. Clearly it's bed for me.
I suspect at least about one-third of my sarcastic comments here are taken seriously, probably mostly without my ever realizing it. I can't decide whether that makes me happy or sad.
I'm very gullible. I really thought you were eating all those crazy things.
I would never misrepresent a fact, Heebie.
So I decided the solution to "find something better to do" was to get some whisky and then return to the internet, apparently. While skimming a book by a wacky Russian dude.
132: Yakov Smirnoff and Jack Daniels, together at last.
I'll learn to refresh, I guess, if the Holy Father says it's okay.
119: Exactly what is the issue? Bob is getting traction by invoking a broad idea about the relationship between systems of law that sounds plausible, but he's not explaining the import of that principle. Should Pope Ratz have resisted defrocking this child molester on the grounds that it would make the church look bad? If that is the intended practical implication, then it clearly doesn't follow.
As I said more or less in 84, I don't think bob's arguing that the church should have (essentially private) authority to decide about the dispensation of child-molesting priests. He's pushing back against your perceived suggestion that the church should be relieved of its authority in general. Something like that.
119:I have absolutely no interest in telling Pope Ratz what he should or should not do and not enough common ground to even make the attempt.
If Ratz aided and abetted child rape, put out a warrant.
I would enjoy that so much more than "Bad Church Bad Church" which bores the hell out of me, even more boring than "Bad Republicans Bad Republicans"
We all waste so much time justifying our preferences.
If Ratz aided and abetted child rape, put out a warrant.
♫ If he aided then he shoulda put a warrant on it, if he aided then he shoulda put a warrant on it, oh-oh-oh... ♫
You know what's really been fucking with me? The fact that that goddamn song works extremely well if you substitute "flipper babies" for the title term. So offensive! And the dance? All the putting your hands up? Bad, Sifu. Inappropriate.
139: But the signature move, of the hand across the face . . .
No, no, that's the funniest thing I've heard all night.
The fact that that goddamn song works extremely well if you substitute "flipper babies" for the title term. So offensive!
You know, Quasthoff performs in a variety of genres. He sings jazz occasionally, for instance. Maybe this could be his crossover hit.
139: I'm now picturing a Bob Fosse number called "Thalidomide Breakfast". Bad Sifu Bad Sifu.
And thinking about it, thalidomide was prescribed to prevent morning sickness, so the title totes makes sense.
10: You know, this stuff sometimes makes me feel smug in the most ugly way. I may even be wrong about the facts of this, but I just think, "Well the Episcopalians in the US/Anglicans in Canada had their scandals too, but we've dealt with them." It's probably not quite true, but I feel it to be so.
Erm... Since this is sort of the Catholic thread... Anyone have gift ideas for a First Communion? This is the daughter of my horrible, evil, ex-best-friend, so I haven't seen her in years and have no idea what she's into. She is also my godchild, formally, so I feel like I should send a gift and put some thought into it. Books, movies, music with a good message about community or other wholesome values? (I am resisting the urge to solicit gifts ideas reflecting a moral message of honesty and loyalty to ones friends...)
Somewhat tempting... But no. Well, probably not.
Anyone have gift ideas for a First Communion?
The fruit hangs so low, but I shall not eat of it.
IT WAS ONLY A COUPLE FLIPPER BABIES!!!
About how old are people on their First Communion?
151: End of 2d grade. I was 8, but others could be 7.
No idea what the customs are here, but in Poland as a godparent you'd be expected to provide both a very nice present and some money for an account your godchild will be able to use later on as they enter adulthood. The present can be anything which the kid doesn't have and would really like.
Well, what with the kid's dad having done his best to fuck me out of about $20K in my divorce, I really don't think I'll be giving any some of money. I will gladly do thoughtful/meaningful, however, as the kid had nothing to do with that.
154: Is the mom the one who didn't invite you to Xmas? Can you tell I am still very angry about that?
She is also my godchild, formally, so I feel like I should send a gift and put some thought into it. Books, movies, music with a good message about community or other wholesome values?
I cannot recall me or anybody else getting great gifts for a first communion. It was more like "Lives of the Saints" and stuff and only from my parents and maybe an aunt and or uncle who happened to be in town. I did get money from the godparents, but that was for confirmation and it wasn't in Bar/Bat Mitzvahish amounts.
I cannot recall me or anybody else getting great gifts for a first communion.
I got a canary the day before, a really great surprise. During the party the following night, one of our cats knocked over the cage and extracted it, and though we got to it before the cat killed it, it died the next day before we could go to the vet.
158: perhaps the cat was simply full of dangerous levels of carbon dioxide?
156: Yes. That's them. I am also godmother because mom's sister was deemed unfit what with being a lesbian and all. So mom and dad are not endeared to me, no. But I am trying to not transfer that onto the kid, and perhaps consider that maybe there are also some important (to me) values this kid ain't going to be getting from mom and dad.
I don't really remember any presents either. I think I got savings bonds from various folks at my confirmation, but for my first communion I only remember getting a crucifix necklace (!!!). Other things I remember: My white cotton eyelet dress; Being driven to the church in my uncle's bright red Fire Chief car (he briefly turned on the sirens to amuse me).
Hey! I remember my white eyelet dress, too! And the only gift I recall is a gold and green Celtic cross from my grandmother.
I never was confirmed, but when my grandma died, my mom found an envelope of cash she had tucked away for "Di's Confirmation," apparently always holding out hope.
||
Home teaching sure has changed since I attended BYU.
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=10341541
>
On the subject of Confirmation, I alienated a number of family members by declining to be my cousin's sponsor (is that the word?). I said that I myself was never confirmed, no longer practice the teachings of Cathol, and didn't think it was appropriate given the seriousness the Church gave to the sacrament. I thought I was being polite and respectful of their beliefs, mais non.
Things I got for my confirmation (United Church of Christ, where confirmation happens at 13 or so, and is also the first communion): two cross necklaces, a Precious Moments Bible, lots of cards with $5 or $10, a potted hydrangea that still lives to this day on the north side of my parents' house.
163: You never were confirmed, Di? That's ... well, I'm surprised. Don't know if it's a sensitive matter, though.
165: Stanely, you can tell your relatives a random guy on the internet said you were right. Or they could google it. You can't be a sponsor if you aren't confirmed yourself or currently practicing.
Why is that surprising? I was never confirmed.
167: Not sensitive at all. I'm surprised it's surprising.
You're all nothing but rumors and innuendo!
perhaps the cat was simply full of dangerous levels of carbon dioxidemonoxide?
At least the cat's curiosity level wasn't fatal.
170: I guess I'm just surprised because it's the standard track, to work your way through the sacraments; I'd gotten the idea that you were from a fairly straightforwardly religious background. Confirmation makes one officially an adult member of the church, right? For life, apparently.
The thought about sensitivity was a sudden hedge, to be honest, since I'd been about to write jokingly that I'd swap you my confirmation if you like, as I don't particularly want mine. From certain religious perspectives, that's a hell of a disrespectful joke to make, however. Hence the hedge.
172: I thought it was carbon dioxide buildup in mines? Needless to say, I didn't google it.
All kinds of dangerous stuff can build up in coal mines, but those two are the biggest threats.
173: I made it through 4 of 7 sacraments -- baptism, penance, communion, marriage. Although I kinda botched that last one. And I sometimes made stuff up in confession because, really, at that age I didn't have much material. But the other two, I did great! And then I was born again in high school. And now I just sort of freelance.
175 should be "monoxide", as it turns out. Fuck you, superfluous oxygen molecule. You have no place in our litany of dangerous mine gasses.
178: Huh, so it should. How did I miss that?
Anyway, carbon dioxide may not be dangerous in a mining context, but there's still the whole exploding lake thing. Not that a canary would have been much help there.
I sometimes made stuff up in confession because
I did confession only once, and I remember just trying to shoehorn anything into a violation of a commandment. "Uh, and I sometimes, like, get mad, uh, at my mom and dad, which is, um, uh, not honoring them, which is bad." Fifth graders don't have many opportunities to sin.
Fifth graders don't have many opportunities to sin.
It's like you didn't even read the post.
I read only the comments, neb. I thought that's what everyone did.
The mine could open onto a dangerous underground lake.
I went to confession as part of every other required portion of youthful participation in the church, which is to say that it meant little or nothing, I'm afraid, and was mostly the imposition of a creepy, ritualized authority. Kids don't have anything of import to confess, at least not with enough understanding to get what confession and absolution are supposed to mean: this is, rather, training in self-abasement.
I found it particularly silly that a 13-year-old should be considered in possession enough of her faculties to be deemed, at confirmation, an adult member of the church, with a full understanding of what that entails.
The idea of confession always really freaked me out and made me glad I wasn't Catholic.
186: The way my mom does it, I think she's basically going to a particular priest to just talk about things, not necessarily all with the "Forgive me father. I have sinned. It's been two weeks since my last confession" stuff. She sees it more as spiritual guidance, I gather.
I wouldn't be surprised if lots of hippy-dippy Catholics (my mom is a hippy-dippy Catholic) see it sort of in this light. As prescribed officially, however, I can agree it sounds overbearing and fear-inducing.
Oh, and controlling, since your forgiveness absolutely has to be arranged through God's local authorized retailer.
188: That's not the hard part. The hard part is that you actually have to be sorry.
One of the most difficult things for me if I had kids would be deciding whether I should try to raise them in any kind of faith.
My parents escorted me through the steps of Catholicism -- it was required (though actually my father's wish or need or demand, my mom being Protestant) -- and we established a deal: I would do what was required up through Confirmation, and then, as an official adult member of the church, I would make my own decisions. Whether to go to church on Sunday and whatnot. We each held up our end of the bargain.
The last time I went to confession, age 17 or so, I confessed how much I was driven to anger by that priest's moronic homilies. And that I was having sex with my girlfriend, just to upset him and not because I felt bad about it at all. I hated that idiot and my parents for making me sit through mass, which (being crazy anti-birth-control-level Catholics) they insisted was as good as going to any church where things might have been vaguely pleasant. Actually, maybe a pleasant time would have been less sacrament-worthy.
I've since found myself sort of trying to defend confession to my (Baptist) partner even though I never got anything out of it myself. I guess I feel that only informed people get to have opinions or something? Huh.
The fruit hangs so low, but I shall not eat of it.
I thought eating of it was the whole point of a Communion.
I guess I feel that only informed people get to have opinions or something?
I'm not quite following. Only people informed about .. the practice of confession?
Not challenging the notion, just not sure what you mean.
I confess my sins to ChatRoulette. Which works out, actually, as it's at least half priests. At least, I assume they're priests. They look like priests. You know, from the waist down.
Vague and intermittent Catholicism up to the age of confirmation, which I did not receive. Then four years weird sectarian Baptist, participating fully without belief.
Then as an adult becoming intellectually interested in Catholicism (& vs Protestantism) with no reference to personal history or social activities.
There was a period I don't remember well, up to three years, when I made confession weekly. Before Vatican II.
109: In my Mom's family, my grandmother made the kids go every week, so they'd hit each other in order to have something to confess. I like collective, general confession myself.
I can't have confessed more than half a dozen times in my life, only when they made us go during the Catholic school day. So I told the priest I'd fought with my brothers, and maybe that I swore. Both were probably true, but I wasn't confessing something I specifically remembered doing and was sorry for. Just something I figured was plausible.
The idea of confession makes sense, more or less like therapy. Talk to someone about your mistakes so you can accept responsibility and move forward in a better way. I've finally learned to be able to do this with my friends and it works the way I imagine it ought -- I don't bear the burden of having to hide my shame, and I get to see that they still love me despite my flaws. The power structure of Catholic confession kind of ruins that dynamic for me. Kind of what ruins church in general. Which is kind of a shame.
193: People who say, "Confession is just STUPID!" and that's the entirety of their opinion but keep saying it over and over are not the kind of people I should engage, though I do because it's my partner and that's stupid of me. I mean, I understand what confession means and its historical context and still reject it and the rest of the Catholic stuff, but "It's stupid and why would anyone do that?" is not the whole reason. I guess I just mean that in general I get annoyed when someone says, "I don't know what that is, but I hate it." But if you know what it is and still hate it, I'm cool with that.
Following up on Di's 198; I can't imagine being unfaithful to my other half because then there would be something I couldn't tell him about, and I just can't imagine it would be worth it. Not even Francis Crawford, not worth it.
...knock on wood, wine to the dove-drawn...
Defrocking is when an individual who is a priest is denied the ability to perform priestly services, and loses the clothing that shows that they are priests. However, a defrocked priest is still a priest. That is because entry to the priesthood is by a sacrament, Holy Orders (one of the seven), and sacraments are not un-doable.
De-frocking is thus purely (and correctly) a matter of canon law.
Secular courts should of, course ,pay no attention to whether someone charged with child molestation is a priest, sacramentally, or not. Likewise, judging the charge of child molestation is not inflected at all by whether the individual is, or was, authorized to perform sacramental functions. The charge of child molestation is judged, as best as we poor humans can do it, by facts and secular law.
Evidently, all sorts of things like sacramental status and authorization to perform sacraments are comfortably outside the liberal hegemony.
