Did I ever say that? No, I didn't. Those things are wrong in any church. Please quit putting words in my mouth.
First you say that approximately 4% of priests are involved in this kind of behavior, then you go on to say that it's an "infinitesimal percentage." I don't know where you learned math, but 4% is not infinitesimal.
As you later said, Catholics represent 28% of Americans and are the "big dog." These crimes affect all of us whether you admit it or not.
Just this week, the youth pastor of a reformed church in nearby Rockford was arrested for child molesting. He was quietly removed from his clerical duties six months ago.
The operative phrase here is that he was removed from his clerical duties, not sheltered by the church leaders above him. One of the worst crimes in all of this mess is that most of the priests who have commited these crimes is that they have been protected by the bishops and cardinals.
The Assemblies of God had clerical trials of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert and defrocked both (or whatever the proper term may be). Their individual sins were not the sins of their denomination. They were both married and involved in extramarital heterosexual activity.
Again, they were defrocked, not protected by their denomination. Is it becoming clear that you've missed out on a big point in your diatribe.
To a Catholic, your opinions of Scripture are irrelevant unless you are invited to the conversation. Worship where you please and how you please and mind your own business. ... When we need you to give us the benefit of your wisdom and YOPIOS as to whether our policies are right or wrong, biblical or unbiblical, man-made or otherwise, Mike, rest assured that you will be the first to hear our request. Until then, MYOB.
Er, I don't know whether you noticed, but ninenot started this thread and in post 169, said "let's argue." Who is ninenot expecting to argue with? That's right, people who disagree. FreeRepublic is an open forum.
For that matter, do you REALLY think that priests are generally unable to find willing and even eager women of inspiring charms? In our world as we know it?
Please point me to where I said anything of the sort. If you can't, then please quit putting words in my mouth. I don't lie about you, so please don't lie about me.
Our whole society is NOT harmed by a priest molesting a child, Mike, however disgusting, deviant, and degraded such an act may be. The child is terribly harmed. Those immediately around that child are harmed. You are not harmed by what happens among folks, not of your acquaintance and who never will be, eight or ten states away.
I think that you're quite mistaken. And even if no one but the child and their immediate family were harmed, don't you still want to stop the abuse? After all, abortion only hurts the mother and the baby so, by your reasoning, we shouldn't be concerned about the effects of abortion on society. I know that Catholics don't believe that way on abortion, so why do you believe this with pedophile priests?
Above the pope, there is only one authority: God Himself.
Yes, and He said that clergy may marry. Please read your scriptures.
I trust I have not been too frank.
No, you've just shown that you'll go to any lengths to protect a terribly harmful man-made doctrine no matter what the scriptures and the Early Fathers said.
I noticed that you refuse to address the facts that I've given you but instead engage in a game of name-calling and putting words in my mouth. Are you able to have a seriously intellectual discussion?
2. The RCC is the big dog and it runs its own show and always will.
3. The RCC has defrocked many sexual abusers and failed to defrock others, not unlike other denominations. Not a justification, just a fact. Narrow-minded public authorities would frown on traditional Catholic remedies like burning the SOBs at the stake after a suitable, ummm, inquiry. Just goes to show what happens when the non-RCC buttinskis stick their noses in where they don't belong.
4. As to the Rockford situation, our Catholic bishop Thomas Doran (the genuine article) has instantaneousely removed from active ministry each of three priests accused of sexual misbehavior upon accusation. One of the three is accused of sexual activity with a Catholic high school girl fifteen years of age in a school where he was assistant principal. The other two instances occurred long before this bishop took office but each priest was removed upon accusation. On the other hand, the youth minister of the reformed church is the son-in-law of the pastor. There are many conflicts of interest in that situation which do not arise in a church with celibacy as a rule.
5. Many Catholic priests have been defrocked for misbehavior. If marriage is some sort of protection, query why Swaggert and Baker got into their jams? Your fish have no bicycle.
6. When you suggest that being unmarried leads to child molestation, that is when you put the words in your own mouth.
7. You will likely achieve a lot more by discouraging the abortion mill in your neighborhood or community than you will in hand-wringing over the one that is ten states away. Likewise are your and my practical abilities limited in dealing with child abuse. If everyone lit just one little candle...... in his own neighborhood.
8. Don't put words in my mouth. I gave at the office as a volunteer attorney for more than one thousand abortion mill Rescuers and at least half were not Catholic. Normally, I did this in my own state (Connecticut at that time) although I also went to Wichita, KS on one occasion and to New York on another. I stop what abuse is in my reach. It is the business of the likes of Slick Willie (the Arkansas Antichrist) and the Hildebeast to be concerned 24/7/365 abbout everyone and everything and to pat themselves on the back for their "concern".
9. Read your own Bible, particularly the part in Matthew in which Christ gives Peter the keys of the kingdom and the part of John 6 in which He says to His disciples the hard saying that they must eat His Flesh and drink His Blood to see God. John tells us that many walked away. They still do. The earlier ones knew Christ personally and rejected Him to His face. They had less excuse than those who never knew Him but imagined Him wrongly by applying their own preferences to their interpretation of Scripture.
10. We aren't going to win the cultural wars without you. You aren't going to win them without us. Christ can win them all by Himself. These "conversations" are not productive. I do not welcome or need evangelization by those who think that the Union Band Church of Jesus Christ Fire Baptized or whatever or the Lutherans or the Anglicans for that matter know better than the Church that Jesus Christ Himself founded and guaranteed. 11. What on earth is a basis for "intelligent discussion" that suggests that Catholics should welcome evangelization by the reformed or by anyone not Catholic? What I refuse to do is to get down into some selective Scripture-swapping contest with those who obsess on Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone or all three alone or whatever.
12. As to the "man-made" doctrine stuff, celibacy is not a doctrine. The pope has the keys. It is a discipline. It exists alongside the disciplines of other Catholic rites: Coptic, Ukrainian, Greek, etc., which ALLOW but do not require pre-ordination marriage. It exists along with exceptions in the Roman rite itself for certain convert clergy. Otherwise see previous post as to irrelevancy.