What happened in the Church was heinous. So is the abuse that takes place outside it. One thing the Church has done is to take steps to protect children, whereas most schools and other denominations have not gone to the great lengths many parishes and dioceses have done.
You can't win if you're Catholic based on the threads I've read here today. We're apparently defending child molesters if we show loyalty to the priesthood. We're accused of laying down on the adoption issue if we run out of legal options. Our bishops are accused of supporting socialized medicine even though the USCCB opposed Obamacare (advocacy for universal access isn't necessarily advocacy for government control). They're accused of cozying up for government money (Were Catholic hospitals supposed to discriminate against Medicare/Medicaid patients? Or display poor stewardship by turning down resources intended to defray the cost of meeting government mandates in the first place?)
Right now CATHOLIC BISHOPS are taking enormous heat for standing up for the right of each and every American to be FREE OF COERCION from the latest Obamacare mandate. And still, it's not enough. I guess some folks find Catholic bashing good sport :( Makes me even more grateful for the protestant leaders and laity (of all faiths and no faith) who've chosen to stand beside us.
Anti-Catholicism has always been good sport here in America. Nowadays, they just use popular media to do it, rather than the legal system (see Blaine Amendments).
“You can’t win if you’re Catholic based on the threads I’ve read here today.”
Yes, it’s easy to get the impression that some people—no one here on FR, of course, but some people—hate the Catholic Church so fanatically that it has robbed them of their reason.
I’m not talking about any FR poster, of course, but some people seem to hate the Catholic Church so rabidly that no explanation, no evidence, no logic, no reference to the scriptures—nothing at all, it would seem—is sufficient to budge them one iota from their irrational, extreme, downright lunatic beliefs about the Catholic Church. None of the protestants here on FR, of course, but some people.
Thanks for this post.
I’ve been by-passing most of the religion forum in the past year because of the constant drumbeat of the posters who seem preoccupied with denouncing the Catholic Church.
It seems to be their raison-d’etre