Posted on 08/28/2018 7:03:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
It is not just one church but it systematic across the board.
They forget that sexual abuses is not just a Catholic problem.
Isn’t it obvious? God was NOT front and center in the lives of these men. Some people will blame God, but that blame is misplaced. Mankind blew its chance for a world free from sin, in the Garden. There is evil in the world, and will be until that point in time that God says, “Times up. If you’re not on the boat by now, I’m sorry, but you’re lost forever”. Jesus is our Ark. Even those who have taken refuge in that Ark, commit sins; we are but flesh. But those in positions of authority, are held to a far higher standard, and what they have done, while it can be forgiven, must be revealed and dealt with in THIS life with not only man’s law, but the Church’s law. And what is to be done, if the Church will not follow its own laws?
That’s not the point.
The point is theology matters.
I’m not a Lutheran, because I don’t believe what Lutheranism teaches.
Etc.
But that’s somewhat tangent to the post you were addressing.
God was front and center. They lived and prayed every day in their churches. They may have even prayed to be free of their sins or sinful nature. The children may have prayed for God to protect them everyday. Using your thought process, why then do so many people want the return of God to the classrooms or the 10 Commandments to our government buildings? Apparently being surrounded these and other reminders as well as prayer has little effect.
When people are taught from the cradle, that the Catholic Church is the only Church, and is inerrant, that if you leave it, you are damned to hell, and that a priest is a holy and authoritative representative of God on Earth, I imagine it is extremely hard to leave. But since the Bible tells us that the Church is the body of Christ, and is made up of a body of believers, not an organization or an hierarchy, even though he appoints and calls some to be shepherds over the Church (the people who make up the body of believers), then you are not bound to stay in a group that allows these crimes to be perpetrated, and you can still be a believer and part of the body of Christ (not to be confused with the Bread of life, what Catholics call the Eucharist). All believers are not Catholic, and all Catholics are not believers. There are millions of non-Catholic Christians, despite what you have been taught. Stay a believer, by all means, but do NOT stay in a system that refuses to clean up its most heinous sins. As a protestant, if I knew of such things going on in my church, unless they were cleaned up, and the perpetrators ousted, I would go elsewhere. Jesus said, in Matthew 18:20, “Where two or more are gathered in my Name, there am I, in the midst of them”.
He could NOT have been front and center in the lives of those men who raped and abused those people. A person who is deeply devoted to God, and is filled with His Spirit, does NOT allow himself to indulge in such hypocritical and heinous sins. Everyone sins, but these are not the little sins we commit every day, like sassing our parents or stealing a candy bar, or cheating at golf. There are sins so heinous, that only a totally corrupt person commits them. Can a tree of thorns, produce fruit? Can a bitter fountain bring forth sweet water? Neither can a totally corrupt person belong to God.
And the bottom line is despite being surrounded by God, He failed those priests, churches and children.
No. No way can you blame God! Those corrupt priests and whoever else was involved are to blame. We’re not robots. We have a free will. If you think this is God’s fault, I pity you. Something awful must have happened to you, and in your anger, you blame God.
You’ve got to get beyond this notion Protestants are all the same
That’s like all Latinos speak Mexican
I’m southern baptist
Calvary Baptist Jackson Miss
Brentwood Baptist nashville area
I’m godfather to a great lady Beaumont area
Priest was exposed later as a huge molestor and shuttled away
I knew he was a freak when I did the orientation
But I’ve helped make sure she’s of the faith and she’s in my will
I love her like a distant daughter
Only so called Prods I’ve seen personally who say y’all are going to hell are posters here many of whom are former Catholics
And on this very thread is someone saying we’re outside Gods grace
It feels like you guys venerate clergy and are Catholic above all
It’s just strange to us but I sure don’t care
What I do care about and what’s become clear to me is this homosexual molestation issue in your faith is not being dealt with by parishioners
I see too many parse it like Laura and the insufferable Arroyo
The Church preserved western civilization which I do venerate
I’d like to see you guys prevail over this
You need to purge homos chaste or otherwise
Did God maybe not answer a prayer, for change, for deliverance or for protection?
I have been told, on this very forum as well as in the real world, by proselytizing Protestants, that I belong to a satanic cult and that we're all headed for hell. Take a look at certain "comic book" style tracts ... you know what I'm talking about.
You need to purge homos chaste or otherwise
Yes. Absolutely. I'm 100% in agreement there, and have been for years.
And by extension, the larger culture both other Christian and secular, needs to get over its love affair with "gays". They're not "artistic" or "creative" or "fashionable" or whatever ... they're sick in the head, sick in the soul perverts. Their attractions are intrinsically disordered. May God grant them the grace of repentance and conversion. May He grant all of us the grace to speak the truth without fear.
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It seems my comment earlier today has offended quite a few other FReepers. I took a hard line in defense of the Catholic Church, and I don’t apologize for that. I do see that what I posted was thoroughly misunderstood. I don’t intend to respond to any who have pinged me directly! as I feel it won’t do any good... but I will respond collectively.
I don’t think most people here can understand how angry, disgusted, and saddened I am as a Catholic who works closely with my parish and diocese. I won’t give details, but people that I love have been harmed by these sins of sex abuse by priests. This is a medium that does not allow me to convey how disgusted and infuriated I truly am. Nothing can justify the evil done by the priests and bishops who have committed and enabled this abuse. Nothing destroys individual lives and souls than the sins of a priest, and nothing destroys the Church more and prevents the spread of the Gospel. Countless innocent souls have been harmed in countless ways, directly and indirectly.
I hate the idea that these priests and bishops have gone untried and unpunished. I hate that the ones that are innocent have not had a chance to have the truth aired and their innocence proclaimed. Far more than that, I hate and am disgusted by the fact that the guilty ones (and I believe that far more of the accused are guilty than are innocent!) have not been forced to face their accusers and answer for their crimes. I am disgusted by the ones that have died without facing justice in this life. I am disgusted by the ones that have been permitted to retire or be laicized and shrink into obscurity. I am disgusted by the fact that public crime demands public trial and public punishment, yet so often victims and the public have been deprived of it. I want to see the return of the Rite of Degradation of Clerics, so that the guilty bishops and priests can have all the honors of their state be publicly stripped from them as they have stripped away the faith and innocence of so many others... and then have them be relinquished to the civil authorities to receive the justice that civil society demands.
For Christians who have have been raised in and/or baptized into any other church, I don’t expect you to agree with me in standing by the Catholic Church in spite of all of this, and I can’t force you to. I can’t even convince you to. You carry the presuppositions and Scriptural interpretations of those churches, and this scandal, perhaps more than any other, confirms the bias that the to be Christian—to be a member of the Church—is only to be part of a merely spiritual community of believers where any visible structure is merely accidental.
As a Catholic, I reject that notion as contrary to Scripture and Tradition... it is not and was never part of the Catholic Faith. I believe that when Christ founded the Church, the one that continues today as the Catholic Church, He founded it as a spiritual community with a visible hierarchy and structure—the Successor of St. Peter as the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, and the Successors of the Apostles as bishops; the presbyters (“priests”) and deacons to assist them, and all of them to serve all the baptized as the People of God. I know some bad ones, but I also know many, many good ones. But I’m not Catholic because of them (bad or good)... sometimes I’m Catholic in spite of them. I’m Catholic because I love Christ and believe that my Catholic Faith is the one I received from Him.
Even when one (or many) choose by their actions to become Judases in their betrayal of Christ, it does not justify vilifying the entire structure, nor does it justify leaving. It is understandable why some do... that is what scandal does and why scandal is evil. But the Catholic Faith is an indivisible thing, and it was given by Christ and unpacked over centuries—and you either accept it all or you accept none of it—a Catholic cannot choose to accept some pieces and not others. Many Catholics do this badly; at times, I have done it badly. But because I love Christ, and I love His Church, my only response is to reform it from within... first by striving to be holy, then by encouraging others to do the same. That is not the response of one trapped in a “dictatorship”... that is the response of someone free in Christ Jesus.
Nobody—absolutely nobody—no matter how offended, scandalized, or even victimized, has the RIGHT to convince somebody to leave the Catholic Church—to abandon the Church that Jesus began. Nobody inside the visible Church, and certainly nobody outside. Of course, on Judgment Day, those inside will be more harshly judged, and those clergy who drove others to leave through the scandal of their sins most of all. The abuse was evil. The enabling heaped on an additional evil. The calls to leave heap on a further additional evil. My conscience won’t let me stand idly by, and I will denounce all of them as I am able. I don’t want to have to answer for my silence. My anger directed toward the ones inciting apostasy comes from my belief that the Catholics who leave are depriving themselves, urged into starvation by the sins of others. As they endanger the souls of others, they endanger their own as well.
Some of you here see me as calloused, blind, unprincipled, perpetuating the cycle of abuse, foolish, deluded, lacking in faith. Some of you have accused me of some of these things earlier in this thread. This is fine, because I know what is in my heart, and I am confident in my beliefs. Your alternate suggestions, palatable to some, are unacceptable to me—neither to accept myself, nor to concede as a viable option to others. Here I stand, and I cannot do otherwise.
Curious as to what those might be? Like not ordaining women? (That's one of my favorites.)
To begin and end (because nothing else is needed), Lutheran and Catholic teaching regarding the Eucharist and the Liturgy which surrounds it are incompatible. A person may believe the one, or believe the other. An honest person cannot claim to believe both.
See also GCC Catholic’s post above, with which I agree.
Hah, there you go, quoting Scripture again, as if ... ;) :(
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