Comments on: VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL CONFERENCE Kooky Judge Anne Burke Channels Dr. Seuss and Cher in Bitter Attack on Catholic Church

By: Vatican II Turns Fifty – Part II: Catholics and Culture Collide BY FR. GORDON J. MACRAE « Deacon John's Space

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:57:47 +0000

[...] problem solely of the Church in Australia. David Pierre at The Media Report recently covered the latest national conference of Voice of the Faithful in the United States, and reported on a set of broad demands that the Church accommodate modern [...]

By: jim robertson

jim robertson — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 01:45:46 +0000

Thanks Julie you have a great day as well.

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:01:28 +0000

Jim, You are generally off the mark in your comments. But I still hope you have a nice day.

By: josie

josie — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:04:22 +0000

JR, your remarksare getting too absurd. I am tempted to offer a comment but have decided not to waste the energy.

By: jim robertson

jim robertson — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 03:32:46 +0000

So now your beating up women. What a grand Catholic tradition. The center of the Catholic Church is as gay as gay can be yet they are self hating. They create generationaly their own loathing oppresors (and themselves.) for what, a God of Love? This aint the dark ages.( Probably the Church's favorite time.) Yet there is still a lot of brightening to do. At this site there is always a forelock tugging. A church in retreat yet swiping viciously like a frightened cat as it exits the door of history. As to having any pretense for knowing what is morally valuable, the Catholic Church finally advanced in some areas is hoplessly death gripped when it comes to itself.

By: Publion

Publion — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 16:35:50 +0000

FAAF simply picks up on exactly the type of thinking I had mentioned above in regard to the post-Vatican 2 agenda and current ‘liberal’ members of the Sisterhood: that “the Church is the people of God” and “she has been abused” – the code trick in this comment of FAAF’s being that the “People of God” are quietly defined as precisely n-o-t being the bishops or Pope and being just the laypeople (and maybe especially SNAP, as I recall still-Father Doyle being quoted on the NCR site a while back: “SNAP is the People of God”). But this little bit of doctrinal whackness can thus ‘prove’ the assertion that since the Church is only the laypeople, then the Church has been abused. Neat. Slick, even.

And you can then even ‘justify’ the bit about the bishops therefore being “anti-catholic”. Marvelous.

Once again, despite a frosting of piety, the comment reveals a rather rackety understanding of some basic theological and doctrinal Catholic principles.

And FAAF then goes on to logically imply that if the Church were perfect in her human form (i.e. not “corrupted”) then the Church could stop all the “evil in the world”. Seriously? Is that all there is to it? So the Church – through her sex-abuse corruption (such as it may or may not be) – is responsible, logically, for all of the evil in the world. This is breaking new ground indeed; foreign ministries and the State Department and the other world-religions should be informed forthwith since they have been clearly working for centuries or “millennia” on a very inaccurate assessment of the origin of all the evil in the world. We read it here first!

One thinks, for example, of all “the wee ones”(estimated at 500,000) who suffered from the decade-long sanctions against medicines and child-nutrition supplies imposed upon Iraq after the First Gulf War, whose suffering and illness and malnutrition and death Madeleine Albright once described as an “acceptable level” of loss.

In this regard, I recommend a look at today’s (Sunday, as I am writing this) “Dilbert” cartoon strip: it deals with having an opinion. The gist of the argument as it goes along in today’s comic strip is this: I like to have opinions, but not informed opinions because going to the trouble of informing yourself defeats the whole purpose of having an opinion which is because it feels good to have one.

This relates strongly to what I have been working on in comments about different philosophies and purposes of internet commenting. And goes a long way (but not all the way) toward getting a better comprehension of much of the internet material that has played so large a role in the Catholic Abuse Matter.

By: Fitasafiddle

Fitasafiddle — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 07:56:09 +0000

Yes. This is so, Publion. The Church IS being abused, and for millennia. The Church is the people of God, as you must have heard, Publion, and she has been abused, all right. And from the anti catholic bishops who put obedience to corrupt authority above conscience, and the protection of the wee ones, otherwise known as the least among us.

By: IllinoisMan

IllinoisMan — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:26:38 +0000

School administrators should be held accountable. But look at Penn State and the damage control and cover-up there and what never got into the mainstream media. The Church is a part of the sexual abuse cover-ups by the elites of society. Often there is overlap between abuse in the Church and in secular society. The Church can't stop evil in the world because the Church itself has been corrupted. So has the entire country. Look at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the murderous wars against Iraq, Libya and other countries. Sure, corruption always has been around but today it seems we are entering a new dark age.

By: Publion

Publion — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 19:50:48 +0000

How do we assess with no access? That is precisely the internet problem.

Following the grammar of the question, the first challenge lies with how to assess. And to do useful assessment one must work very hard to b) analyze what information is available (not only through the internet but through reading and studying) but only after laying down a) the basis of competent investigative and analytical and thinking skills. The first challenge lies within the individual and only afterwards does the focus change to the object of investigation. First you ensure a competent mechanic, and only then do you open the hood and start looking at what’s there.

The cover-up as an explanatory hypothesis leaves some rather large gaps. First, it is necessary to distinguish between instance of actual cover-up as distinct from an instance where something was valued differently in a different era. So for example, were the courts, police, law enforcement and politicians all in on a nationwide ‘cover-up’ of drunken driving during the decades from the invention of the automobile to the early 1980s?

In the case of the public school system: since it has only just recently started to come under even a modest amount of the type of scrutiny the Church has been under for 30 or so years here, then it is quite possible that organizationally the public-school system will demonstrate the same difficulties or organizational response as is claimed about the Church. Surely the few cases we have seen publicly give grounds for thinking that there is much more going on and the organizational establishment is not being totally forthright. And one only has to look at the government (which has the added organizational advantage of ‘classifying’ inconvenient (or worse) information for ‘national security purposes’. For example, the satellite photos that ostensibly provided proof that in 1990 Iraq was massing troops on the Saudi border (thus justifying US military presence being greatly beefed up in that kingdom) have never been publicly shown and up until the mid-2000s (which was the last time I checked) were still ‘classified information’ 15 or more years after the first Gulf War (1990; Kuwait).

So at this point it is not easy to justify a presumption that a) the Church has ‘covered up’ and b) that the Church is unique in this organizational response.

Thus too, of course, the question of transferring teachers who are suspected of abuse. Up in Boston there has been a significant indication that such transferring has been practiced and thus there exist valid grounds for suspecting that there are other instances of such practice.

Therefore there is a lot of careful groundwork yet to be done before getting to the making-conclusions and assertions stage.

In addition to the foregoing, there is perfectly legitimate justification for considering as an explanatory hypothesis the possibility that the flare-up of the American type of Catholic Abuse Crisis in other countries (mostly Western) is simply a migration of the same syndromal dynamics over there that have been going on over here.

Holding people and organizations responsible for actions is certainly a general human idea of a good thing to do. But when such holding-responsible is going to be done in the legal forum (through civil lawsuits or criminal process) then an entire additional (and much more stringent) evidentiary standard is introduced, on top of the general Scientific Method requirements for competent and reliable analysis and assessment.

Thus “the problem here” is, as I said, first getting competent mechanics and then second making an accurate assessment of what’s wrong under the hood. This is not a challenge easily met by the usual internet methods – about which I have written a great deal in comments on this site – that confuse argumentum with assertion. (I use the Latin term whose English equivalent is ‘argument’, because in English the word ‘argument’ popularly boils down to vitriolic back-and-forth emotional exchanges; whereas in Latin the word means a reasoned and careful analysis, put forth step by step leading to a rationally demonstrated conclusion.)

I and every other Catholic bear the burden of the hierarchy’s actions the same way that American Citizens (and taxpayers) bear the burden of their government’s actions, foreign and domestic. Where one goes from there with that fact is a very interesting question and open to much discussion.

By the same token, Catholics “enable” their hierarchy in the same way that American Citizens “enable” their government. And again, where one goes from there with that fact is a very interesting question and open to much discussion.

However, given the many complications at the analysis-stage of dealing with the question, then there’s still a lot of ground to be covered before deciding just what Catholics are “enabling”. Especially when it has to be realized that this is 2012, and not 1962 or 1982 or even 2002 – the hierarchy has made some very substantial changes (perhaps more than any other organizational entity in the country).

And lastly, and as I have been saying, Catholics are “responsible” for the actions of their hierarchy in much the same way that American Citizens are “responsible” for the actions of their government, in its actions both foreign and domestic. And again, where one goes from there with that fact is a very interesting question and open to much discussion.

But I think it’s clear that the all-too-common internet tactic of Assert First and Disparage Questions Later is grossly incapable of conducting the type of analysis and assessment necessary to achieve an accurate and informed grasp of any particular Issue or Matter or Problem.

By: jim robertson

jim robertson — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:33:50 +0000

let's pretend that everything you said above is true. How do you assess with no access?
Here's how I see this whole migillah: There were and have always been abusers sexually of minors in the Catholic Church. Just as in America's public school system. The difference is the cover up. Arn't superiors held responsible in the public schools if they hide and or transfer knowingly a sexually abusive teacher or employee? Yet somehow the Church is, only because it's religion, less culpable?
And the Church's behavior internationally has been unerringly similar. In Ireland where the school system is at the same time governmental and religious. The state and Church both are held responsible for the coverups. Holding people responsible for their actions especially regarding harming children seems to be a commonly held good idea. So what's the problem here? Do you or do you not bear the burden of your hierarchys' actions? You pay them. You feed them. You house and clothe them. You obey them. You enable them. How are you then not responsible in part for their good or bad actions?

Comments on: **VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL CONFERENCE** Kooky Judge Anne Burke Channels Dr. Seuss and Cher in Bitter Attack on Catholic Church

By: Vatican II Turns Fifty – Part II: Catholics and Culture Collide BY FR. GORDON J. MACRAE « Deacon John's Space

By: jim robertson

By: Julie

By: josie

By: jim robertson

By: Publion

By: Fitasafiddle

By: IllinoisMan

By: Publion

By: jim robertson

Comments on: VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL CONFERENCE Kooky Judge Anne Burke Channels Dr. Seuss and Cher in Bitter Attack on Catholic Church