http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-01/cardinal-george-pell-court-decisio...
Cardinal Pell, the top Catholic in Australia and number three in the world, has been committed to stand trial on sex abuse charges.
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Yep. Wanna grab some popcorn and go watch? Should be very interesting.
Sadly they dropped the most serious charges but if we, the people, can get this bastard then the precedent is set to go for them all.
@Old man: Sadly they dropped the most serious charges
Some because the victim had died, and others because the victim was too ill to testify. If I was religious I'd say the devil looks after his own...
"the devil looks after his own..."
the devil doesn't care about what he did. its god who's interested of what he's doing to the poor kid. he just sits and watch first hand and he'd say to the priest
"go ahead rape em.. after that you'll burn."
what happen to your just and almighty omnipotent god?....hey guys..!!! i think your god is broken..
fix it...i can't see him doing his job..
At what point will the RCC excommunicate this scumbag?
We're still waiting for any top Nazis to be excommunicated, so my best guess is never. I mean why would the church care if the threat of excommunication might be the only thing that checked the barbaric behaviour of it's paedophile priests. Yes it's as clear as ever that morality can only come through religion, words fail me, well almost what a bunch of amoral scumbags.
sorry, off topic:
check your inbox Sheldon.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), very few immoral actions are a basis for excommunication. Off the top of my head, I know abortion warrants excommunication.
If all immoral actions were to warrant excommunication, then all Catholics would be excommunicated by tomorrow noon.
Try and categorise the rape of a child on a scale of immorality. As I'm dumbfounded you think abortion is immoral at all let alone comparable.
Do you think the RCC should excommunicate those who rape or sexually abuse children?
That should simplify things with a yes or no answer...
-----------------------------------
"Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), very few immoral actions are a basis for excommunication."
If excommunication were a significant deterrent to the rape of one single child why on earth would it be unfortunate to use it? Religious claims for morality really do baffle me. They don't seem to encompass empathy or a desire to avoid suffering at all, just a perfunctory deference to archaic superstition. No wonder child abuse is endemic in the fucking church.
The 'sin' that results in automatic excommunication is being female. Ask to be a priest and you will be excommunicated so fast it will make your head spin.
You are forgetting my other posts - The vatican 'legalized' pedophilia 100 years ago.
I found the documented evidence. The Australian canon lawyers published two documents. The first is a legal report entitled “Canon Law – A Systemic Factor in Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.” (free download from National Catholic Reporter) written for the Australian government. The second is the lay version “Potiphar’s Wife.” (buy on line for real money) . I verified the information with a friend of the author and the legal firm from the movie Spotlight
The theological concept is called ontology. When a priest is ordained, they are
magically transformed into someone who can do no wrong. It is all those lying, English speaking, children trying to seduce those poor innocent priests causing all the problems. Just ask the vatican.
I am now past over 1,000 individual groups and organizations that I have protested to. Including the organization of nuns protesting human trafficking. I got over 600 hits here
I tried the other groups that were kindly suggested here. They were mostly closed down computer hackers. I did get a couple more to add to my list - so Thanks guys.
Please provide direct links.
rmfr
https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/university-report-lifts-li...
I didn't think that was allowed.
It is 400 pages of legal 'brief.'
You ask me for what I think so I'll give you what I think. And I think they should be excommunicated. But then why stop at just rapists of children?
Rape of anyone for that matter should be included in these sins which incur an automatic excommunication.
However, the RCC doesn't put dole out excommunication as a punishment (something people usually misunderstand). Excommunication is usually a form of pastoral response. It's usually there to reinforce the idea that certain actions are wrong.
Heretics are excommunicated based on this and any excommunication can be removed. How does it relate to everything else and why certain sins incur an excommunication and while others don't.
Most ex-communicable sins are one which can only be done by priests (heresy, breaking the seal of confession, forgiving someone in confession where the priest himself is a participant of the sin as well, ordaining a bishop without authorization.) While very few are things that regular people can commit - abortion, attacking the pope, violation of the Eucharist (throwing it away). And again, you can only be excommunicated if you're Catholic (if we're talking Catholic excommunications).
As to almost all grave sins (murder, rape, theft, cheating on one's spouse, etc,), most people agree that these things are gravely wrong and should not be done. As to abortion, not everyone is in agreement over this issue for one reason or another. As a response to this, the RCC has categorically stated that abortion is on the same level or even worse as murder (as it directly kills an innocent human being) and to further her point that it is so grave, has attached excommunication to said sin.
Again, if and when abortion is seen as more universally abhorrent, I think the excommunication will be lifted from the sin. It doesn't make it less grave. It simply makes the faithful (Catholics) more aware of how grave it is.
Again, as to your rape example, almost everyone, including the Church hierarchy, agree that those sins are grave and so the tag of excommunication is not needed.
"You ask me for what I think so I'll give you what I think. And I think they should be excommunicated. But then why stop at just rapists of children?"
Well I never said they should, but offered a specific idea that *if it was a deterrent and stopped one child being raped or assaulted then they should be doing it, however the church's reaction as we now know was to protect the guilty from justice and deny the victims both justice and compensation that might have helped them try and rebuild they shattered lives.
"Rape of anyone for that matter should be included in these sins which incur an automatic excommunication."
If it helped stop rape then yes, any magic incantations that made a rapist re-examine their barbaric and cruel acts would be something at least. Though I'd prefer a more pragmatic approach of rehabilitation obviously. I'm not so much suggesting excommunication is real, but that the actions of the church who believe it is real is immoral.
"How does it relate to everything else and why certain sins incur an excommunication and while others don't."
Well of all the Nazis who were Catholics and there were a lot, only one was excommunicated, and it was Joseph Goebbels, and it wasn't for any of his appalling crimes against humanity but because he married a divorced protestant. That tells me something about the moral outlook of the RCC, and I don't believe any objective person could infer anything good from it.
Again and for clarity I don't believe excommunication is a real or tangible act, but others do, and it tells me something that the church use it for petty enforcement of dogma but not for the rape of a child.
" As to abortion, not everyone is in agreement over this issue for one reason or another. As a response to this, the RCC has categorically stated that abortion is on the same level or even worse as murder (as it directly kills an innocent human being)"
They're wrong, and again the fact they'd excommunicate a women for this but not a priest for raping a child amply demonstrates how fucked up their moral compass is. The church has a long history of trying to control women sadly.
"Again, as to your rape example, almost everyone, including the Church hierarchy, agree that those sins are grave and so the tag of excommunication is not needed."
Precisely my point, they'll excommunicate a women for an act that harms no one and causes no suffering, but not for one of the most barbaric acts that is deeply pernicious and ruins the lives of it's victims, fucked up moral compass QED. This is what happens when anyone bases their morals on pleasing a fictional deity by adhering to archaic dogma, rather than focusing on reducing and avoiding harm and suffering to real people who can experience physical and emotional pain and trauma.
The RCC belongs to our barbaric past, and it's values have long since ceased to be a force for good, if indeed it ever was.
You seem to have an incomplete idea of how the church excommunicates believers based on abortion. And why abortion carries with it, excommunication. See my previous reply to the later. Excommunication does in no way say one act is more grave than another. It simply reinforces the idea that a certain action does have grave consequences.
The person to be excommunicated is not only the woman (the mother, I'm assuming). It's everyone directly involved in the abortion - the doctors, the nurses, the father of the baby who gave his permission, the parents of the woman who approved.
Again, everything you've said as well (genocide, rape, etc) are all gravely wrong. But these are actions which are already generally accepted as gravely wrong. The fact that you see absolutely nothing wrong with abortion while I do reinforces this idea.
Again, excommunication doesn't make an act less or more grave than it actually is. It's a tool used by the church to echo to its people that certain acts are in fact, gravely wrong.
" Excommunication does in no way say one act is more grave than another."
That is precisely the point I am making, how can a moral stance not differentiate between behaviours? Raping a child causes immeasurable and tangible suffering, abortion by comparison does not, as a developing foetus isn't sentient and doesn't have the cognitive ability to register pain or experience emotions.
this is just another example of how religion's and the church's adherence to archaic and out of date dogma is irrelevant to our morality in the 21st century. This is always going to happen when you deal in absolutes as if morality shouldn't ever try and be improved.
"Again, excommunication doesn't make an act less or more grave than it actually is. It's a tool used by the church to echo to its people that certain acts are in fact, gravely wrong."
That makes no sense how can it address some act as gravely wrong, and others ipso facto as not, but simultaneously be saying nothing about how gravely wrong an act is? Even by religious apologetics standards that's an inane contradiction. Your claim obviously means the RCC is sending the message that it doesn't consider actions like genocide (the Holocaust) and the mass rape of children as (in your own words) gravely wrong, but marrying a divorced protestant is.
That's some fucked up moral compass.
It actually says both those acts are gravely wrong. Together with murder, rape, genocide, etc.
Again, excommunication is not based on the gravity of the act. All excommunicable offenses are grave. But not all grave offenses are exommunicable.
The list of grave offenses is way too long and to include all of them as excommunicable would ultimately mean that the church would have to be consistently excommunicating more than half its members every other day.
Why aren’t you getting this?
Well people have been excommunicated for:
But for what it is worth; you probably think those are all grave offenses.
Some of the offenses you’ve stated are true. Some are just plain false.
Cross dressing? Please state the canon where this is the case.
Writing books critical of the Church? Again, state the church teaching on this. There have been a number of columnists and authors who are critical of the Church but are still in good standing.
Saying gay people are capable of loving each other? Again, please cite the church law that says this.
Joan of Arc
-------------------------------------------------------
José María Vargas Vila
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Father Roberto Francisco Daniel
Check mate, I wonder what desperate rationalisation those facts will prompt?
On Joan of Arc, you do know her excommunication was never valid? The bishop tried to excommunicate her but the Vatican never approved her excommunication. Which is why she’s even a saint in the Church.
On Jose Maria Vargas Fr. Daniel, what they did was to deny essential church teachings in a public space. It’s not the act of criticizing that got them excommunicated. A lot of people do this and continue to do this until today and are still very much in good standing with the church.
Bishop Barron for one criticizes how the church has been handling issues post Vatican 2. Fr. John Harvey, founder of Courage, was lauded for his efforts to reach out to the LGBT community and bring them into the Church.
And of course Galileo was threatened with excommunication for evidencing that the earth orbited the sun. Along with torture and being burned at the stake of course if he didn't recant. As it was he placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.
Obviously challenging the authority of the church to enforce erroneous dogma as fact is way more heinous than raping a child or murdering tends of millions of people.
@JoC Re: "The list of grave offenses is way too long and to include all of them as excommunicable would ultimately mean that the church would have to be consistently excommunicating more than half its members every other day."
".....have to be consistently excommunicating more than half its members every other day." Bwaaaah-haaaa-haaaa-haaaa...! Oh, where to start?...Bwaaah-haaa-haaa....! Perhaps I should stick with just the top three potential responses.
Option 1: And the problem with that would beeeee....???
Option 2: Wow! That says sooooo much for Christian morals and values.
Option 3: So when is the RCC's book "Fifty Shades of Grave" coming out?
Oh, alright! Maybe top four....
Option 4: Oh, sure, it's a grave offense. But it is just a little less grave than some of those other grave offenses. Therefore, we will not punish the offender quite as badly.
And the list goes on and on and on....
As I said it's a risible moral compass that can think divorce is any way comparable wit genocide and raping a child, but to think divorce is a more grave act requires a truly fucked up moral compass.
"The list of grave offenses is way too long and to include all of them as excommunicable"
Oh ffs JoC, that's a ludicrous red herring, try adding genocide and raping children to excommunicable offences, and removing divorce and abortion, that wasn't difficult and no long lists were needed. Anyone who thinks the last two acts are more grave crimes than the first two has lost all concept of morality.
"Why aren’t you getting this?"
Because I have some semblance of morality, and can see that genocide and raping children are acts that define the word evil, whereas divorce and abortion are not immoral in any way.
Re: JoC - "Again, everything you've said as well (genocide, rape, etc) are all gravely wrong. But these are actions which are already generally accepted as gravely wrong. The fact that you see absolutely nothing wrong with abortion while I do reinforces this idea.
Again, excommunication doesn't make an act less or more grave than it actually is. It's a tool used by the church to echo to its people that certain acts are in fact, gravely wrong."
Am I the only one who notices that this (among other similar statements from him) sounds just like something out of a Monty Python skit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SB4gB3DEhA
i recommend this repellent for their kids, to get rid of those abusive pastors and priests away from children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iU6OsX8_SI
@ Algebe
A warning on this I just tipped myself out of my chair laughing at that....thankyou!
@Old Man
if you are talking about the "Priest Off", then, yeah, that was a good one. LMAO
Thanks for that, Q!
(Yeah, I'm a little late getting to this one. Last few days have been crazy.)
its ok T-man..
don't mention it, its a pleasure making someone his/her day
yeah and by the way, i have a discount for the repellent. who wants some? for their kids/grandchildren.
we all have to be cautious you know...
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