Stand with Ratzinger or stand with the Catholic victims

[Pisces]

Johann Hari is calling on British Catholics to protest the Pope's upcoming visit:


I know that for many British Catholics, their faith makes them think of something warm and good and kind – a beloved grandmother, or the gentler sayings of Jesus. That is not what Ratzinger stands for. If you turn out to celebrate him, you will be understood as endorsing his crimes and his cruelties. If your faith pulls you towards him rather than his victims, shouldn't that make you think again about your faith? Doesn't it suggest that faith in fact distorts your moral faculties?
I know it may cause you pain to acknowledge this. But it is nothing compared to the pain of a child raped by his priest, or a woman infected with HIV because Ratzinger said condoms make AIDS worse, or a gay person stripped of basic legal protections. You have a choice during this state visit: stand with Ratzinger, or stand with his Catholic victims. Which side, do you think, would be chosen by the Nazarene carpenter you find on your crucifixes? I suspect he would want Ratzinger to be greeted with an empty, repulsed silence, broken only by cries for justice – and the low approaching wail of a police siren.


http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-catholics-its-you-this-pope-has-abused-2074029.html

This is how I have come to feel about the situation. It is almost too overwhelming to digest.

[elocs]

1. This may become a moment in religious history for the Catholic church as big as the Reformation.

There may well be millions of Catholics who will demand either the church change or they will leave. The current state of the Catholic Church reflects the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept". Its actions have made it the epitome of evil.

[struggle4progress]

2. There's no real evidence the Catholic church has worse history than any other large institution

for such incidents

The Catholic church is a huge, rather non-transparent, organization, and the hierarchy tends to be authoritarian and very conservative; it has handled such incidents poorly; and so one has a lot of press about events that occurred over fifty or sixty years

That makes, I suppose, for exciting media reports, which titillate rather than inform

But, of course, Johann Hari has his own anti-religious agenda, as exhibited in bits like http://www.johannhari.com/2010/08/10/the-slow-whiny-death-of-british-christianity">The slow, whiny death of British Christianity

So I'm inclined to regard the OP as just another nasty rant from Johann, not shedding much light on anything

[Pisces]

4. Unfortunately you have decided to focus on Johann Hari intstead of the issue.

This is not about the writer, it is about the state of the Catholic Church and it's actions that continue to defy belief. I believe the church will change or it will be crippled forever.

[TheMadMonk]

5. What the RC church has is an unbroken 1600 year history of abuse, greed and corruption.

It wrote the manual on dirty tricks. It is the world's longest enduring corporation, it is the model on which all other corporations are based and it is what every corporation aspires to become.

[pacalo]

3. It's puzzling that Catholic churches have made a big issue of a woman's right to choose

yet we don't hear the same level of protests against sexual abuse of children who are helpless, particularly so since their abusers are those they were taught to respect & to look toward for moral guidance.

This is particularly disturbing:

In 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appealed to Ratzinger to defrock Father Lawrence C Murphy, who had raped and tortured up to 200 deaf and mute children at a Catholic boarding school...Ratzinger advised him to take a "spiritual retreat". He died years later, unpunished.

Abortion is just terrible; but look at the apathy of these same self-righteous busibodies after these children are tortured & raped by their own leaders.