LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

I've heard a couple of people call for the pope's arrest.

edited 17th Feb '13 6:44:02 AM by Elfive

My mistake.

It was mostly on this thread, admittedly.

We are not really calling for his arrest Morg we just wish we could arrest him cause we don't like him. At least I am.

I don't think it is an excuse, I think he is a terrible person and there are several other terrible people who's views deserve to not be taken seriously. Were just talking about him at the moment.

Let's be honest here. The head of any other organisation with such a huge child abuse scandal would at least have been questioned by police, especially if there was reason to believe he had helped hide it.

I'm not aware of anyone doing this to the U.S. Secretary of Education, so I'm not sure that I buy your assertion.

It's the government, what do you expect?

Well, technically, the Pope is a chief of state too...

Has the Secretary of Education protected teachers from charges? The union people who have, as well as Ratzinger and any other who aided the pedopriests in fleeing justice, should be prosecuted.

Certainly administrators—members of the American education "hierarchy," if you will—have done so, and union representatives & leadership have done so vigorously. There hasn't been much in the way of serious legal consequences, though, especially not at the highest levels. So here and elsewhere, precedent doesn't favour anything much in the way of legal revenge fantasies.

Yeah, sexual abuse in the U.S. public school system is more broadly distributed and less hierarchical, with tons of independent administrators engaged in their own ass-covering techniques. A wide overhaul of the entire works across states would be needed (and you know how hard it is to coordinate across states in U.S. politics).

Compare this to the Catholic Church, with its top-to-bottom hierarchy. The Pope - several Popes - could have made things end right then and there by agreeing to cooperate fully with law enforcement officials, ousting bishops who didn't play along, and generally refusing to continue the status quo.

That should get more publicity. But the people actually doing the covering up should be the ones prosecuted.

edited 17th Feb '13 9:53:54 AM by Qeise

however top-down and hierarchical the Church may be in theory, in practice it's always given an extraordinary amount of latitude to national churches and archbishoprics, and has nearly as much scope for lateral shenanigans and short-term asscovering as RT describes. Whenever the Vatican has roused itself to bypass national-level hierarchy and take a direct hand, it's usually been after an extraordinary amount of time, sluggish debate, and third, fourth, and fifth chances. That fact doesn't thrill me—especially not in the abuse cases—but it's hard to say that the Vatican was more hands-off or slow to bring the hammer down than usual.

edited 17th Feb '13 10:13:57 AM by Jhimmibhob

Except that the Vatican could have done something and didn't and in many cases set up and implemented policies that the local churches had to follow. The US Department of Education doesn't have authority over local schools' disciplinary policies and internal management.

edited 17th Feb '13 10:26:19 AM by Lawyerdude

Thank you Wildcard for explaining this. I myself thought it was pretty clear, but still.

Additionally, I fail to see where the excuse is when nearly everybody participating in this thread is doing their part to ensure equality.

The other factor is, due to local politics rewarding people who want to make public school teaching a minimum wage job, education departments don't have the funds to do a proper overhaul. The entire USDE got a little under 100 billion dollars in 2011 according to Wikipedia. I suspect that the Catholic Church has a bit more disposable income than the U.S. Department of Education.

It's more the fact that we know he was directly involved in the cover-up. There is no evidence that the secretary of Education was directly involved with the cover-up. There's a difference between something bad happening on your watch, and participating in something bad happening on your watch. The pope participated.

Now, mind you, he didn't participate when he was pope. It was before he was pope that this happened. Before he was pope, he was directly in charge of investigating, punishing, and reassigning paedophile priests. And he still put them back where they could get at children and covered up their crimes from the secular authorities.

So it's got nothing to do with him being the head of the organization or Pope, but instead the fact that he actively helped hurt children.

edited 17th Feb '13 11:22:19 AM by shimaspawn

Sorry for the double post, but this vid seems relevant:

Can we just all agree that The West Wing is amazing? :P

No.

Yes, Mr. President, beat a Straw Fundamentalist and pat yourself on the back for your rather insipid conclusions. I stand for the President because the Bible tells me to honor my leaders.

If he, or any real world leader, approached me with such self-righteous ignorance, I'd have glued my ass to that chair and told him to get the Secret Service if he didn't like it to carry me out.

But, alas, this is Hollywood so this sort of posturing comes off as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome. No matter, Real Life is a different ball game than some TV Show with an agenda, and the results change accordingly.

Starship have you watched the West Wing? I think you’d like it, they're all extremely idealistic and the president himself is actually a very devote Christian. As for the fundamentalist begin made of straw, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of real American radio hoists who say the exact same thing, so I don't think the strawman accusation works.

Silasw, I really hate it when you make me see that I've overreacted.

Yes, President Barlett in that show is very very Christian. The reason that he's upset with her is because he sees her as perverting the religion.

And at the time that show aired, there were media pundits saying those exact things in the media. There still are. You can only have Strawmen if you don't have people vocally espousing the same ideas. In fact, she's toned down from some of the actual media figures. That's the problem.

In other words, the very same things I say about Fred Phelps...

Note to self: Don't assume the thread is out to get Christians.