Are you still Catholic? If so, go fuck yourself.

...That is, unless your priest has already fucked you.

And that's just Pennsylvania! Imagine the fun and frolicking Catholic priests have enjoyed on a global scale... for centuries!

Really, can we all just finally admit -- as rational adults -- that the Catholic church is simply one giant organized crime syndicate full of rapists, child molesters and thieves?

yes I read about this a few minutes ago.......words fail me! A little off topic (but still related) is people worrying about the "Nazi" threat but directly enabling & supporting these kid fuckers on a massive scale like there's no tomorrow! Just sayin'

What about the people who worry about trannies getting them in the bathroom when that has never happened, but who will gladly leave their children alone with priests despite this going on pretty much since Jesus supposedly walked the earth and before. What about the children? If we take Christian actions into account they are there for priests and judges to rape.

Yeah, the math pretty much supports that if you put anything in a Catholic collection plate, that nickel/dime/quarter/dollar helped put a cock in a kid's ass.
Congratulations.
Try to Hail Mary that shit way.

I think lots of sexual predators hide behind the conservative Catholicism weird ideas about sex. Like from what I've read the idea of sex only for procreation and not recreation.

I watched Spotlight this weekend. What a horrible group of people.

How many Catholic priests are there in Pennsylvania?

I think it is more because of opportunity and power along with the fetishists idea of purity and innocence. A priest or religious authority is trusted and considered above reproach. To attack one is to attack the community. You have a position where you will have access to children and protection from the church and community who hhave an interest in their own beliefs. You can also command people. If you are looking for a place with contact with children this is a place where you would go. Predators look for the prey, and that is where it is like schools and the internet.

There is also a sexualized mentor position, or parent position which is a part of the fantasy. What normal people would feel as pride and caring for youth, the pedophile feels a sexual arousal. It is also a part of their arousal to lead a,child through their growth from innocence to adulthood. What a parent or adult in a child's life gets from raising a child gets associated with sexual arousal. If you get one talking without you vomiting you would hear them romanticising taking the child through puberty into,adulthood in a way they feel they are making the,child's life better. This is also why the thrill leaves in adulthood.

I am not sure if this is an avoidable association, or just how you could expect a,person with a,born attraction to children to develop. Given lots of pedophiles suffer abuse it may very well be preventable with proper development. Then again sexual attraction seems to be somewhat predetermined so maybe not.

300

I'm of the understanding that a lot of sexual predators join the priesthood in the hopes that the strict rules attached to the profession will prevent them from giving in to their urges.

I honestly thought about becoming a pastor or a high school teacher back when I was a religious teenager, but I decided against both once I realized I'd probably have trouble resisting the temptation of any sexy teens.

Ummmm...

so is that where the expression "more bang for your buck" comes from?

well since a male priest and a young boy cannot procreate then this wouldn't make any sense.

https://www.pacatholic.org/resources/pa-catholic-statistics/

~850. Now I don't know what the average tenure for a priest is, and these 300 stretch back to the 1950's, and some of them are dead, but likely some perpetrators have moved out of the state...... this is a significant fraction of all the priests in PA over this time period. This isn't a few bad apples (and some evil apples covering for them), this barrel is lousy with rot.

The priests are kind of like cops in a way - they get away with whatever their leadership will tolerate. So if the system is FUBAR it's only going to trickle down. And in the priest's case it will literally trickle down.

In the United States, a pastor assignment is for six years, renewable for another six. They can also be shorter. I believe the average is ~6.

What happens then?Assignment elsewhere in the state, out of state?

I don't think states come into it. But they usually change diocese IIRC.

My understanding is that the molesters ended up moving more often than normal as they generally kept getting into trouble and so were moved away the situation.

oh, the "pass the buck" strategy that the military used to practice when higher ranking NCO's & Officers couldn't keep it in their pants.

I imagine most tried to rationalize it as the situation was the problem, not the priest (he pissed off somebody so they are trying to get him in trouble, etc), but yeah. Someone else's problem.

My dad insists that I'm Catholic. However, the only rituals I've participated in are baptism and a christening (which were done without my knowledge or consent, because, baby), I haven't been inside a Catholic church since I was three, I do not have the Lord's Prayer memorized, the only thing I know about the Hail Mary prayer is that it starts with "Hail Mary," I think Jesus is a fictional character, I think God as depicted in the bible makes no logical sense, and while Pope Francis is much better than anyone else who as ever had that title, I still think he's an asshole. Considering all of this, my dad has very little evidence to support his claim.

Even though I'm probably not Catholic can I still go fuck myself? That sounds like fun.

According to the archbishop of Detroit, that's not rape, it's "impure relations."

https://www.freep.com/story/news/lo...iocese-pennsylvania-priest-scandal/980104002/

Pennsylvania.

I was hardcore Catholic through my teenage years, even considered becoming a priest. Trouble is, I like women a lot, and I don't like little boys. Religion's (official) antagonism toward sex and the natural human condition in general is enough to turn me away.

So I stopped going to church during my college years and haven't looked back. I identify now as agnostic.

Calling it something else and hiding these men isn't going to help them, and it sure as hell isn't going to help the children they've molested. If @Tererun is correct, and these men enter the Priesthood to try and get away from their desires then what they need is help. Being around the very people they want to stay away from, and having one on one contact with them unsupervised is just a giant problem in the making.

In recent years, hasn't the Catholic Church talked about relaxing the whole "no sex" thing for Priests as a way to kind of take the pressure off?

Rank and file Catholics discuss it often, but the clerical hierarchy remains stubborn. They really ought to, though. New priests have been in short supply for decades, such that in the US you're likely to have a pastor from some developing country.

It just seems like a reasonable thing to do, and they honestly need to just let it happen. Let Priests marry. You suppress the sex drive for decades at a time, especially against someone's will (because there are asexual people who have little or no desire for it), and weird shit starts to happen.

They are moving that way. There are already married priests, it is just that married men can’t become priests and priests can’t marry.

That is one way to look at it. Another, more charitable, look would be that religious folks with ‘deviant’ (non heteronormative) thoughts and feelings embrace the church in the hope that if they are faithful enough god will ‘fix them’. Since there is no god, this inevitably fails and repressed sexuality could then fester into actual harmful behavior.

Probably a mix of the two, but I’m a humanist so I hope it is more the later.

I'm reminded of an episode of "JAG" where a priest (who was on the show once before) comes to visit Harmon Rabb while investigating the claim of a miracle attributed to a deceased padre as a possible prelude to sainthood for the man.

Rabb is talking about music and the priest says "I used to play those songs when I snuck girls up to my room in college".

When Rabb gives him a look the guy simply shrugs and says "I wasn't born a priest, commander".

Well, then hopefully they'll make it so single priests can marry. I get the feeling that would drastically reduce such incidents (though it wouldn't remove all of them, unfortunately).

This is another reason why I'm so frustrated with the state of mental health care in this country. If these people are running to somebody for help, it should be people who are capable of dealing with that kind of mental illness, and not religious authorities.