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Comment by Alenycus | Hacker News Reader

Catholic priests are less likely than the general population to be predators. You only hear about it because the media Is hostile to the church. School districts across the country have done similar things in terms of cover ups but I don't hear the outage there.

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So the Church, an organization that sets itself up as the moral arbiter between God and man, doesn't have more of a moral responsibility than school districts across the country?

And there is plenty of moral outrage for coverups, no matter the source.

Please. People hate the Church because it says it is one thing and is another. The media is critical of the Church because the Church has tried to make itself the authority on people's behavior, yet itself behaves in a reprehensible manner. Maybe it should just go back to being the Mafia's bank and just obliquely supporting drug cartels and human rights abuses via loans?

Your whole comment is just whataboutism. You've an opportunity to refute the assertion that the Church knowingly covered up abuse of children, and you've decided that if others have done it, it can't be that bad.

The Church only claims that it is a hospital for sinners. It doesn't claim that it is a country club for saints relaxing on earth for a vacation. The surprise that such a hospital should be full of those who need its cures is not Biblical. The sadness that it is so, on the other hand, is, so thank you for your moral outrage!

And no one is claiming that there aren't sinners in the Church, and no one is outraged that there are. The problem is that the "hospital" was moving abusers around from floor to floor to avoid responsibility.

Heck, if the Church defrocked the abusers (those in need of its "cures") when they were reported, and took actions to keep them from abusing and answer for their crimes to the legal authorities, no one would have this (particular) problem. But the Church didn't, because it was protecting itself. The Church is more important to the Church than the victims of those crimes.

Hence, the Church exists to ensure the existent of itself, and all it's actions are in service of that singular goal.

Frankly, moral outrage at child sexual abuse and the systematic cover up of the abuse and protection of the abusers is justified. If the Bible is written in such a way that such moral outrage is a sickness, then it is truly awful foundation to base your morality upon.

But thank _you_ for minimizing the responsibility of those covering up the crimes and ensuring that they could continue.

My point is that the Church is not the churchmen and that those who cover up others crimes, like those who commit them are all in the beds. You do not see the Divine Physician and so conflate those under judgment with the One Who judges the living and the dead.

Moral outrage is not a sickness - moral outrage is thinking God's thoughts after Him and so is to be commended!

The Church is composed of the people in it. And should be judged by the actions of those that comprise it, otherwise you are abandoning all agency, and it may as well be dismantled as it could not be responsible for anything it does.

Also, no evidence of any god exists, but that is another argument. Let's stick with arguments that postulates the existence of a God in the Catholic tradition.

First, according to the Bible, papal infallibility has whatever the Church does held as law in Heaven. Stupid rule, but there you are. Therefore, if we judge that covering up and enabling child abuse is immoral, then the Church is by its own rule, immoral. Well, that doesn't work out so well for the Church. So let's leave that aside.

The Catholic Church (and other denominations) tries explain evil (and thus side step the "All Good, All Power, and All Knowing -- pick two problem of God), but claiming that it is all part of God's greater plan. The difficulty here is that it doesn't side step the problem, but tried to solve it by adding a layer of abstraction to it. What you end up with is that God's plan has to be definitionally immoral because it came from the mind of God.

The answer is, of course, who can know the mind of God? It sort of kicks the can down the road much the way the Millerites (now Seventh Day Adventists) do on the end of the world and QAnon does with Trump coming back (was it January 20th? Or March 6th? Or March 20th?). Evil exists because God's plan demands it, but somehow removes the responsibility of God's plan from God.

So, the children were abused by the men acting in God's name because God's plan demanded their suffering, but God owns none of the responsibility because you can't possibly understand the reason that God required the suffering of those children. Nice work, if you can get it.

Free will (in the Catholic tradition) allows the ability to see the harm that actions do upon others, but somehow we are supposed to turn a blind eye to that done under the protection of God. Because those children were clearly not under the protection of God.

Divine Physician, indeed. Physician, heal thyself.

I guess there’s someone willing to defend anything.

I don’t see anything about the general population, but to bring up schools is whataboutism. Unfortunately predators seek out jobs that will put them close to children. The Catholic Church coverups go up to the chain of command and they continue to let pedophile priests serve. These issues were well known to the church but they let abuse continue and did not turn priests over to the police. Are you not outraged by this? If your son or daughter was abused by a priest who has been abusing others for decades would you not blame the church?

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