Posted on 12/21/2010 6:22:04 AM PST by the invisib1e hand
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI told Vatican officials Monday that they must reflect on the church's culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal, but he also blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common.
In his traditional, end-of-the-year speech to Vatican cardinals and bishops, Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" that required the church to accept the "humiliation" as a call for renewal.
"We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen," the pope said.
Benedict also said, however, that the scandal must be seen in a broader social context, in which child pornography is seemingly considered normal by society and drug use and sexual tourism are on the rise.
"The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times," Benedict said.
He said that as recently as as the 1970s, pedophilia wasn't considered an absolute evil but rather part of a spectrum of behaviors that people refused to judge in the name of tolerance and relativism.
As an avalanche of cases of pedophile priests came to light, church officials frequently defended their previous practice of putting abusers in therapy, not jail, by saying that was the norm ...
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(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Nice work AP.
Yuletide-slander alert.
Sign of a news services decline, when they go to war against all things Christian.
I’m sure the Pope said 100 other things too, but we won’t be told about those.
Yep, the Pope didn’t say anything of the sort, he talked about the Church’s culpability, not “whats wrong with Christianity.” If the author cannot see the difference he is a complete moron. Then again he probably does but just wanted a chance to take a cheap shot a Christianity. Either way though, he is a complete moron.
Catholics sound like bratty little kids: "Well, they did it!"
Rome just can't take the blame for their sodomizing of little boys.
The Department of Education and the NEA must ask why so many young women teaching middle school can’t keep their hands off the fifth-graders.
Gads, these people can take anything he says and twist it to make it sound just the opposite.
They always do this in the headlines, since that’s the only thing most people read anyway.
Why don’t you take your spite and put it where the sun don’t shine?
Maybe you should consider reading what he actually said. But that might be too hard for you.
Accepting responsibility is one thing, and that is needed in this horrible situation. But also responsibility needs to also be practiced by the MSM, which sure seems to lack it so very often.
I don’t mind a dissenting comment, but this suggest foaming spittle on your keyboard. This thread is far more about the lying media and criminal sexual perversion than it is about the Church but, like the lying media, you fault the church.
And the address is well worth reading.
The title is misleading.
The Pope is talking about what went wrong in the church not what is wrong with Christianity.
That said, his shifting the blame to secular society is sad. You either take responsibility or you don’t.
The “everybody does it” argument is disgusting.
That appears to be the strategy. The gods of journalizm apparently decreed "anything goes" in the big, bold spot above the body of writing to which libel laws actually apply.
I'm pretty sure this is what Marshal McLuhan was getting at.
“...this is what Marshal McLuhan was getting at...”
Now if we only had Woody Allen to actually bring him out to clear this up...as he did in ANNIE HALL.
No, you either speak the truth or you don't.
The “everybody does it” argument is disgusting.
Yes, it certainly is. Of course, one would have be either naive, malicious, or willfully ignorant to interpret the pope's remarks in that way.
Gawd that was classic.
Maybe you should pull your head out of the sand and show compassion for the victims of Rome’s crimes.
That same sniveling quoted by the AP is on display almost daily by Catholics here on FR.
Perhaps you should ask your FRiend Salvation about the interpretation since they usually post a plethora of “everybody does it” links.
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