My mom walked away. She'll be 85 in Aug. Since my dad passed, thank God before all this crap, she refuses to go to church. Blames finding out about how EVERYONE in the church hierarchy knew about the pedophile priests and still just quietly moved them to New hunting grounds. She and my dad used to be heavily involved in the church. We knew several archbishops personally. They ate dinner at our house. To say she's pissed is putting it mildly.
That is unfortunate, and im sorry to hear about it.
I'm confident there are way more good than bad people, especially in the Catholic church, but it is always the bad few everyone hears about.
Totally not blaming anyone, but there is a blind trust I've seen many people have. Parents are the first line of defense for their children, and you can never have blind faith for anyone except Christ, we are all mortal and fallen short, and i think people see a collar and just forget about common sense. Again, not saying anyone deserves this, or trying to excuse anything. Just saying things like this are typically more complex and multi faceted than just saying stupid stuff like, "all priest men bad!"
Mom is very angry because knowing about it, and allowing them to continue as "priests", makes them all complicit. How do you sit in mass and have men, even if merely "complicit", try to preach the Word of God? His Words shouldn't even leave their mouths. They allowed men they KNEW were violating God's tenets to continue saying mass and handling the Eucharist. Blasphemy.
The only thing I can contribute in response is that of a protestant's perspective.
If teaching God's word was reserved to the sinnless, there would be no preachers, pastors, or priests. Jesus would be the only one worthy to teach us, which doesn't work. Obviously this is part of satan's twisting of words and our minds to put wedges between us and our fellow man, and therefore also between us and God.
We have all fallen short and are unworthy without Grace.
It isn't fair or accurate to lump all of the Catholic Church's leadership into one thing, as if they can read eachother's minds and know what everyone is doing at all times.
There are any number of situations and people involved when a pedo thing happens, and most are different.
Sometimes the police are called, sometimes not. A lot of times dicipline is relegated to the church, others the priest are arrested and tried.
If you rely on only the MSN for your news on the topic, then all priests and bishops are a cabal of pedos and conspire to ship pedos to as many parishes as possible.
If you actually take the time to follow stories through as far as reported to the public, you may be surprised to find the truth is different.
First, the actual number of incidents are a power of magnatude smaller than what is flippantly claimed. There is a stigma around Priests that all are pedos. Not true obviously.
Second, in several cases the offender actually ended up in prison. Others were removed from the priesthood. Some are dead: murdered, "punished", killed by inmates, etc.
Third, yes, there are documented cases where corrupt leadership hid (tried to hide?) the offender. Do all priests or Bishops approve of this? Obviously not.
But what is your average (non pedo) priest supposed to do? They aren't doing the job of shepherd because it is easy, or because they agree with all their leadership's decisions. They are there to do God's will and carry on sharing the message while surrounded by sin and satan's work. You can't stop just because someone sinned, as agregious as this is. Again, I think it is overly simplistic to a situation to assume they are all on board with the sin and decisions made by leadership which is beyond their control.
Parisheners should not lump people in together like your mom is doing. It isn't moral and it isn't Christian, and is definitely NOT what Christ taught.
If you lump all lesbians together and say they are all going to burn in hell, and they're all pink haired werdo progressive pedo Molech worshipers....I think you can agree that is not right.
Plus, in doing so you affront God by attempting to nullify Grace, which is his gift to give and not ours to discard flippantly. Is it being said that the Holy Spirt cannot enter a repentant heart, or that someone cannot be reached because you think their sin is too great?
My family has a very blunt relationship, so if my mom was acting like this, I would be comfortable calling her out on that attitude. I'll pray you are able to reach yours.
Great perspective all around Rooks! Shalimar, all good Catholics are pissed about this. But do you know who's even more pissed than anyone else? The good priests! We're talking about 0.5% - 4% of priests who were involved and the mere few in the hierarchy who covered it up are absolutely complicit. Yet, the good ones are also accused and attacked because of the bad few. But what is the average good priest in your neighborhood to do? They have no authority. Leave the priesthood? That's a win for Satan. Speak out from the pulpit? They do it often. Assist in the healing of those abused? Those I know do this too. The laiety have more power than priests in this fight. Go to a parish of a good priest, stop giving the diocese your money, pray for all involved, use your voice. I told my Archbishop to his face he was complicit when God gave me the opportunity. But to walk away from your faith because of the actions of others is not the answer. I pray your mom will return while she still can.
I hope her anger is with the offenders as it rightly should be. And not with her faith. I hope she walked away from only her physical church. Not Jesus.
Most of us do not understand what we are dealing with.
Normal human beings care about love, beauty, and creation.
Psychopaths/Sociopaths care about power, control, food and sex. Nothing more. That's because they have a complete lack of empathy. No empathy = no conscience.
This explains why they always take over everything - from your local HOA to leaders of the Catholic church and entire nations - and why they so easily do such horrible things.
But the normals still don't understand this and keep trying to reason with them. That never, ever works because sociopaths only see it as weakness for them to exploit. And they do.
Once you do understand this, it all becomes very, very clear as to what these people actually are and why nothing ever gets better as long as they're in charge of anything.
My mom walked away. She'll be 85 in Aug. Since my dad passed, thank God before all this crap, she refuses to go to church. Blames finding out about how EVERYONE in the church hierarchy knew about the pedophile priests and still just quietly moved them to New hunting grounds. She and my dad used to be heavily involved in the church. We knew several archbishops personally. They ate dinner at our house. To say she's pissed is putting it mildly.
That is unfortunate, and im sorry to hear about it.
I'm confident there are way more good than bad people, especially in the Catholic church, but it is always the bad few everyone hears about.
Totally not blaming anyone, but there is a blind trust I've seen many people have. Parents are the first line of defense for their children, and you can never have blind faith for anyone except Christ, we are all mortal and fallen short, and i think people see a collar and just forget about common sense. Again, not saying anyone deserves this, or trying to excuse anything. Just saying things like this are typically more complex and multi faceted than just saying stupid stuff like, "all priest men bad!"
Mom is very angry because knowing about it, and allowing them to continue as "priests", makes them all complicit. How do you sit in mass and have men, even if merely "complicit", try to preach the Word of God? His Words shouldn't even leave their mouths. They allowed men they KNEW were violating God's tenets to continue saying mass and handling the Eucharist. Blasphemy.
The only thing I can contribute in response is that of a protestant's perspective.
If teaching God's word was reserved to the sinnless, there would be no preachers, pastors, or priests. Jesus would be the only one worthy to teach us, which doesn't work. Obviously this is part of satan's twisting of words and our minds to put wedges between us and our fellow man, and therefore also between us and God. We have all fallen short and are unworthy without Grace.
It isn't fair or accurate to lump all of the Catholic Church's leadership into one thing, as if they can read eachother's minds and know what everyone is doing at all times.
There are any number of situations and people involved when a pedo thing happens, and most are different.
Sometimes the police are called, sometimes not. A lot of times dicipline is relegated to the church, others the priest are arrested and tried.
If you rely on only the MSN for your news on the topic, then all priests and bishops are a cabal of pedos and conspire to ship pedos to as many parishes as possible. If you actually take the time to follow stories through as far as reported to the public, you may be surprised to find the truth is different.
First, the actual number of incidents are a power of magnatude smaller than what is flippantly claimed. There is a stigma around Priests that all are pedos. Not true obviously.
Second, in several cases the offender actually ended up in prison. Others were removed from the priesthood. Some are dead: murdered, "punished", killed by inmates, etc.
Third, yes, there are documented cases where corrupt leadership hid (tried to hide?) the offender. Do all priests or Bishops approve of this? Obviously not.
But what is your average (non pedo) priest supposed to do? They aren't doing the job of shepherd because it is easy, or because they agree with all their leadership's decisions. They are there to do God's will and carry on sharing the message while surrounded by sin and satan's work. You can't stop just because someone sinned, as agregious as this is. Again, I think it is overly simplistic to a situation to assume they are all on board with the sin and decisions made by leadership which is beyond their control.
Parisheners should not lump people in together like your mom is doing. It isn't moral and it isn't Christian, and is definitely NOT what Christ taught.
If you lump all lesbians together and say they are all going to burn in hell, and they're all pink haired werdo progressive pedo Molech worshipers....I think you can agree that is not right.
Plus, in doing so you affront God by attempting to nullify Grace, which is his gift to give and not ours to discard flippantly. Is it being said that the Holy Spirt cannot enter a repentant heart, or that someone cannot be reached because you think their sin is too great?
My family has a very blunt relationship, so if my mom was acting like this, I would be comfortable calling her out on that attitude. I'll pray you are able to reach yours.
Great perspective all around Rooks! Shalimar, all good Catholics are pissed about this. But do you know who's even more pissed than anyone else? The good priests! We're talking about 0.5% - 4% of priests who were involved and the mere few in the hierarchy who covered it up are absolutely complicit. Yet, the good ones are also accused and attacked because of the bad few. But what is the average good priest in your neighborhood to do? They have no authority. Leave the priesthood? That's a win for Satan. Speak out from the pulpit? They do it often. Assist in the healing of those abused? Those I know do this too. The laiety have more power than priests in this fight. Go to a parish of a good priest, stop giving the diocese your money, pray for all involved, use your voice. I told my Archbishop to his face he was complicit when God gave me the opportunity. But to walk away from your faith because of the actions of others is not the answer. I pray your mom will return while she still can.
I hope her anger is with the offenders as it rightly should be. And not with her faith. I hope she walked away from only her physical church. Not Jesus.
Most of us do not understand what we are dealing with.
Normal human beings care about love, beauty, and creation.
Psychopaths/Sociopaths care about power, control, food and sex. Nothing more. That's because they have a complete lack of empathy. No empathy = no conscience.
This explains why they always take over everything - from your local HOA to leaders of the Catholic church and entire nations - and why they so easily do such horrible things.
But the normals still don't understand this and keep trying to reason with them. That never, ever works because sociopaths only see it as weakness for them to exploit. And they do.
Once you do understand this, it all becomes very, very clear as to what these people actually are and why nothing ever gets better as long as they're in charge of anything.