Why Catholic ethos and morality didn't prevent abuse of children

[patslatt]

The Catholic ethos and morality didn't prevent abuse of children in orphanages and industrial schools because the morality is not grounded in real life and practiced by Catholics.For example:
-Sex outside of marriage and even thinking about sex was a mortal sin that condemned the soul to Hell for all eternity up until the 1960s in Church teaching (The sermon in James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" conveys a terrifying description of Hell as taught for generations).
-Turning the other cheek to assaults,otherwise known as appeasement, is a licence for bullies.
-Giving away all you have to the poor is an extreme version of charity but extremism is usually unwise in most areas of life eg in generosity,love etc.
-Extreme unquestioning obedience to authority,drilled into the Catholic clergy for nearly two thousand years,prevents challenges to corruption in the authoritarian Church hierarchy.
-"Love thy neighbour as thyself" is a principle that could only be followed by a saint,even if the concept is attractive as a perfect ideal.

As for the first point,sexual puritanism,this led to intolerance towards children of single mothers and children from broken homes. And generally,the set of unrealistic moral beliefs bred hypocricy.

So when Catholics were faced with the evils of child abuse in industrial schools,they lacked an effective moral code for guidance.Instead,they were guided by excessive deference to the Church,hypocritical attitudes and moralistic contempt for the children of broken homes.

Where do Irish Catholics go from here? Fortunately,the parish priests have a better grip on reality and are more in touch with the public than the sexually repressed cloistered orders who showed a complete lack of basic decency and morals in their dealings with children in industrial schools. Catholics will adopt the a la carte approach to religion,choosing the aspects of the religion that suits them and ignoring Roman dogma. Many Catholics,like the atheist Richard Dawkins,will be indifferent to dogma but choose to be cultural Christians interested in religious ceremonies, hymns and the social side of church attendances.

[Mitsui]

Wow, Pat. Well done. Seriously.

(Sorry - late night).

[Glennshane]

One could give many examples where there is a gap between dogma and practice.

The American declaration of independence stated that all men are created equal and about 80 years later slavery was out-lawed.

The American tradition of extreme democracy has produced the "ward-healer" or "party boss".

Buddaism is probably the most docile and pacifist religion in the world. Look at the mainly Buddhist countries. Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka.

The ultra-democratic Calvinist religions tend to be the main religions of the ruling tribe in countries with race relations problems - Ulster, Scotland, Rhodesia, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA. In the USA the slaughter of peaceful Indians in order to steal their land started in Pennsylavinia. The culprits were members on an organisation called the Paxton Boys. They were all Ulster-Scots, Presbyterians from Northern Ireland who had taken their ethnic cleansing tendencies with them across the ocean.

[hopi watcher]

Would it be too much to ask all, including the well intended. to refrain from contributing to this rediculous thread with it's lazy analysis or attempt to use the abuse that went on to bolster a particular view of the world and those in it. Suffice to say that the abused have suffered enough and our silence here would show some solidarity with them rather than attempting to use their suffering as a stick to beat up those we disagree with.

[Ciarán Integralist]

I don't understand why there needs to be so many different threads attacking the Church, shouldn't there just be one sticky titled "I despise Jesus Christ and His Church"?

[blacbloc]

Would it be too much to ask all, including the well intended. to refrain from contributing to this rediculous thread with it's lazy analysis or attempt to use the abuse that went on to bolster a particular view of the world and those in it. Suffice to say that the abused have suffered enough and our silence here would show some solidarity with them rather than attempting to use their suffering as a stick to beat up those we disagree with.

I too see an agenda at work here. Fintan O' Toole made a very good analysis of the issue in yesterday's IT in which he attributed part of the cause of the abuse to a deep-seated contempt for the poor and poverty among Irish people. 170,000 children were incarcerated in those appalling institutions - 1 in every 100 children in the country. Patslatt has been careful to separate out his own contempt for the poor from the sexual abuse - denying that love thy neighbour as thyself is even a consideration. For him, apparently not. Good thing he is not working in one of those institutions now or he would, I believe, be very easily led - as many lay people, young priests and nuns were - into doing what they did.

[garlandgreen]

I don't understand why there needs to be so many different threads attacking the Church, shouldn't there just be one sticky titled "I despise Jesus Christ and His Church"?

Self pity. Disgusting. Take your medicine

[Mr.De-Regulation]

There is always going to be a problem with a belief that one can easily be forgiven for whatever crime.

[femmefatale]

I think what we are dealing with was a gross distorted perversion of Christianity/Catholicism, and the distortion was so pronounced as to make what manifested as Catholicism an inversion of true Christianity.

The Church somehow went the way of corrupt law enforcers, i.e. encharged with upholding the law, they saw their role principally as one of prosecuting others for their misdeeds. They saw themselves as above, and unbound by, the laws and rules designed to keep others in check.

Had the guilty persons heeded the teachings of Christ and properly observed the precepts of Catholic (sexual) morality, they quite simply could not have done what they did. They were completely false Catholics and non-Christians. The same goes for their facilitators and apologists, then and now.

[garlandgreen]

I think what we are dealing with was a gross distorted perversion of Christianity/Catholicism, and the distortion was so pronounced as to make what manifested as Catholicism an inversion of true Christianity.

The Church somehow went the way of corrupt law enforcers, i.e. encharged with upholding the law, they saw their role principally as one of prosecuting others for their misdeeds. They saw themselves as above, and unbound by, the laws and rules designed to keep others in check.

Had the guilty persons heeded the teachings of Christ and properly observed the precepts of Catholic (sexual) morality, they quite simply could not have done what they did. They were completely false Catholics and non-Christians. The same goes for their facilitators and apologists, then and now.

For them to be deviants assumes there is a clear demonstable and agreed upon standard for them to deviate from. Cardinal Law still resides in Rome