“”For a priest to break the seal of confession, he would be excommunicated,” Bishop Koenig said. “That could only be lifted by the Pope.”“
Any religion that would do such a thing is morally bankrupt. Full stop.
“claiming it would “dissuade people from seeking forgiveness from God”…”
Any religion that would provide forgiveness for such crimes without requiring real repentance (stopping the molestation completely) or punishment for the crimes through societal norms is morally bankrupt.
Absolving people for crimes they don’t intend to stop, protecting people who are actively hurting other people, especially children, is reprehensible. So, if all the clergy of the Catholic Church are not committing the rapes, they most certainly are complicit in the cover up if they support this system of hiding the problem through loopholes and shuffling priests.
The conclusion we can come to is that the system is working as designed, they’re not going to accept changing it because it benefits them.
I do find it funny that there has recently been a case where a woman who confessed to a priest she cheated on her husband was outed to her husband by said priest. But that didn’t end with the priest being excommunicated. And there are cases of theft from the church that get confessed to, but don’t stay private. So it can be done, just for when the so called sin harms the church or a man. Women and children must fend for themselves.
Allowing child abuse to continue is preferable to being kicked out of the church? Any church that takes that approach isn't worth belonging to. Not that any of them are.
What is amounts to is that priests who hear such confessions and do nothing about them are accessories to the crime of sexual abuse, whether it's of a child or an adult. This is made worse by the doctrine of the sanctity of the confessional, and it plays to the utterly unjust concept of forgiveness of sin without facing the consequences of violating someone else's rights.
With this doctrine, the Catholic Church becomes a roadblock, smack in the middle of secular jurisprudence ... and until that roadblock is cleared, the abuse will go on.
It wasn't just the clergy who circled the wagons to protect their own, civil authorities were often very quick to go after anyone who dared accuse a member of the clergy of having committed a crime. The expectation of Christian privilege is deeply entrenched.
“ There is not a scintilla of evidence that child abusers are confessing their sins to Catholic priests.”
Maybe because the priests are not required to provide that evidence, and in fact are forbidden from doing so?
“ One state representative is already rallying troops to fight against this bill, claiming it would “dissuade people from seeking forgiveness from God”…
And there is not a scintilla of evidence that God has ever forgiven anybody for anything, or that God has any inclination to forgive his child molesting representatives.
I can only conclude that God is the name of the cold dead silence that greets the plaintive cries of a child being molested by one of his representatives
If you read his book carefully, you will find he gives plenty of instructions on how, exactly, to abuse children. No need for forgiveness, God told them how!
Kinda reminds me of the state of Florida discarding the policy of reporting cases of COVID back when the pandemic was raging. No reports, no problem. No reports, no COVID.
Why do we, the people, allow this shit to happen???
The biblical god, if he were real, should be the one seeking OUR forgiveness for allowing his agents on earth to molest children for nearly the entirety of the Christian religion.
If a priest used the confessional to admit having stolen a considerable amount of money from the church to fund an obvious lavish lifestyle, what would the priest hearing the confession do?
I ask because clergy actually HAVE stolen church money to live an extravagent lifestyle. Michael Jude Fay (who eventually got 3 years), Robert Couture (he got 10 months), etc. If the seal of the confessional is inviolate, how did the authorities finally find out?
I mentioned below a few instances where the seal of confession wasn’t so inviolable, if women perpetrated the sin or if it was about money and the church. It very much is a cherry picked rule.
Just read where a woman who gave birth to 5 children in 5 years wanted to get her tubes tied. She required her husband's permission (given), and the approval of the hospital board. Denied! She was under 30.
Meanwhile, her husband had a vasectomy within a week that she didn't have to approve.
The church isn't morally bankrupt. You can't lose what you didn't already have.
It's not about children, or forgiveness, and confession never stopped repeat offenders. It's about power and money.
I play a hidden objects game. One of the objects was a morning star. I kept looking for a star that was sad. After many failures I finally looked it up. They were easy to find after I knew what to look for.
"There is not a scintilla of evidence that child abusers are confessing their sins to Catholic priests."
Well, if no child abusers are confessing their sins to priests, then priests and the Church have nothing to worry about from this law, Mr. Donohue. So why oppose it?
Bildo spews "There is not a scintilla of evidence that child abusers are confessing their sins to Catholic priests."
"Sins," Bildo? They're CRIMES. Sins are no more real than your god is. Speaking of which, the RCC goes out of its way to support and defend a phantasm in the clouds for which there is not one scintilla of evidence while ignoring the damage their clergy does to the very real victims.
Why? That phantasm is their clergy's meal ticket, of course. The clergy has shown what it truly cares about. And it isn't children.
Good for those seven Montana Democratic lawmakers.
If their bill were to pass, (The weather report in hell predicts no freezing temperatures) it would be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. I'm sure that there are plenty of theocrats who would WANT it to go before THIS Supreme Court, because with their reliable pro-religion, pro-Christian, and pro-Catholic bias, they would not just preserve clerics' present immunity from reporting laws, they'd STRENGTHEN it.
Organized religion has a long history of "reforming" whenever one of its atrocious practices finally becomes just too outrageous for society to tolerate. But those reforms are like a psychopath having his suit cleaned. The only way to stop the evils of religion is to starve it to death. Don't practice it, don't defend it, don't rationalize it, and DON'T donate to it.
I found this site just before retiring from 35 years as a Jesus Huckster. I am indebted to Hemant. and all the rest of you for making my transition from theism so easy.
I can not remember a time when someone who came to me confessing of crimes against children.
However, if someone had confessed to child abuse, my next call would have been to Child Protective Services. Even if the United Methodist Church had not required clergy to be a mandated reporter, I can not imagine keeping that a secret.
As a Catholic schoolchild, I was required to go to confession every week. I once contemplated telling the priest I wanted to kill one of my classmates because he beat me up on a regular basis and the priests and nuns at the school wouldn't do anything to stop it. i knew, however, that I'd be the one to get into trouble for it. Once I was out of that school, I stopped going to confession altogether. After all, I stopped believing in that stuff by the time I was ten.
About a year after First Confession (I would have been 9), I noticed that I was making up stuff, just to have something to say, when I was forced into going to confesson each week. I asked my mom what to do. She shrugged and blew me off, saying "everybody does that." So, every time I was forced into this stupid ritual, I continued to make shit up, til I finally ditched the whole thing when I ran away at 17. Did I ever discuss this with any priest, nun, or other religious adult? Why should I? They'd just told me I wouldn't be taken seriously!
I was raised atheist and watched/ helped a lot of people along the way to reality. Ten to twelve is the age the ones who actually make it start. This shit really does damage your mind as a kid--lots of people get lost in some woo-woo nonsense, or fascism, along the way.
A lot of people get stuck in agnosticism, to which I say: If you are not equally agnostic to the existence of Harry Potter as you are to the existence of your god, you are not agnostic. You are religious with doubts.
At about age seven, your brain develops enough to reality check your information. You can spot that moment when the kid stops believing in Santa Claus. But then the kid is hit with functionally infinite pressure to believe this other Santa Claus For Grown Ups is actually real, and it really messes people up. It seems very, very hard to hold onto rationality across your whole life. Look at all those old white guys who just had a hissy fit with the FFRF for not platforming bigotry. Whatever they might have had in their youth that garnered them their platform, they lost entirely.
Boldly into the fray dives the RCC, defending the (dis)honor of the Jehovah's Witnesses! Even though they can't stand the sight of one another on any other day of the week, when it comes time to circle the wagons around some holy-rolling rapists, 𝘴𝘶𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘭𝘺 they're all on the same page. Funny, that.
Seems like every major religious organization on the planet has the same damn problem with raping children- gee whiz, it's almost as though there's 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 about having a position of authority accountable only to an imaginary friend that makes being a religious leader an inherently attractive profession for predators!
"(c) A member of the clergy or a priest is not required to make a report under this section if the communication is required to be confidential by canon law, church doctrine, or established church practice."
In other words: "The internal rules of some private association take precedence over the law."
In what universe was it possible to include this abomination into the law.
I find it highly instructive that the RCC does everything it can to avoid being held liable for its own actions or lack thereof. Note here that we're talking about a law intended to protect some of the most vulnerable members of society; the goal here isn't some burden intended to destroy the RCC as an entity. 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼'𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑙𝑎𝑤𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑢𝑙𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑠. This is, from what I'm seeing, the RCC admitting they are an enemy of humanity and that they do not care when the vulnerable are made victims; the RCC cares more about "Holy Mother Church" than they do about people. With that in mind, I'd say that every government entity around should consider ending any and all privileges the RCC may have enjoyed to this point. The RCC can, has, and will continue to abuse any privileges they can lay their grubby hands on.
And if we're going to be honest here, the SBC is in the same boat along with a few others.
The reason that the Vatican won’t allow researchers and scholars full access to the Vatican’s archives is due to the fact that the full extent of the church’s Crimes Against Humanity would then be exposed.
It was Hitler's knowledge of pedo rapes by priests in Germany that allowed him to silence the pope. Basically the vatican opened itself up to blackmail for its complicity in child rapes. See Kertzer's "The Pope at War."
“”For a priest to break the seal of confession, he would be excommunicated,” Bishop Koenig said. “That could only be lifted by the Pope.”“
Any religion that would do such a thing is morally bankrupt. Full stop.
“claiming it would “dissuade people from seeking forgiveness from God”…”
Any religion that would provide forgiveness for such crimes without requiring real repentance (stopping the molestation completely) or punishment for the crimes through societal norms is morally bankrupt.
Absolving people for crimes they don’t intend to stop, protecting people who are actively hurting other people, especially children, is reprehensible. So, if all the clergy of the Catholic Church are not committing the rapes, they most certainly are complicit in the cover up if they support this system of hiding the problem through loopholes and shuffling priests.
The conclusion we can come to is that the system is working as designed, they’re not going to accept changing it because it benefits them.
I do find it funny that there has recently been a case where a woman who confessed to a priest she cheated on her husband was outed to her husband by said priest. But that didn’t end with the priest being excommunicated. And there are cases of theft from the church that get confessed to, but don’t stay private. So it can be done, just for when the so called sin harms the church or a man. Women and children must fend for themselves.
Allowing child abuse to continue is preferable to being kicked out of the church? Any church that takes that approach isn't worth belonging to. Not that any of them are.
Exactly!
Women and children must find for themselves because the (un)holy book that tells them what to do calls women and children things instead of people.
What is amounts to is that priests who hear such confessions and do nothing about them are accessories to the crime of sexual abuse, whether it's of a child or an adult. This is made worse by the doctrine of the sanctity of the confessional, and it plays to the utterly unjust concept of forgiveness of sin without facing the consequences of violating someone else's rights.
With this doctrine, the Catholic Church becomes a roadblock, smack in the middle of secular jurisprudence ... and until that roadblock is cleared, the abuse will go on.
...by design, many a wealthy man likes extremely young victims to abuse. The church will never out a donor.
So the Church can punish priests for being decent human beings, but chooses not to when they rape children.
Good to know, Bishop.
For the children, it was the worst day of their entire life. But for the Church, it was a Tuesday…
The Catholic Church has a centuries-long tradition of protecting child abusers, so why change now? /S
There is no horror that cannot be, and has not been justified in the name of religion.
"protecting child abusers" Religion at its best. Who's to question the prophets priests and spiritual leaders of invisible beings?
In Vishnu We Trust?
It wasn't just the clergy who circled the wagons to protect their own, civil authorities were often very quick to go after anyone who dared accuse a member of the clergy of having committed a crime. The expectation of Christian privilege is deeply entrenched.
Agreed, and it's a good bet the the "civil authorities" are deeply involved with beliefs in the supernatural, invisible places and beings.
MAGAs, keeping the fear alive and in control.
“ There is not a scintilla of evidence that child abusers are confessing their sins to Catholic priests.”
Maybe because the priests are not required to provide that evidence, and in fact are forbidden from doing so?
“ One state representative is already rallying troops to fight against this bill, claiming it would “dissuade people from seeking forgiveness from God”…
And there is not a scintilla of evidence that God has ever forgiven anybody for anything, or that God has any inclination to forgive his child molesting representatives.
I can only conclude that God is the name of the cold dead silence that greets the plaintive cries of a child being molested by one of his representatives
If you read his book carefully, you will find he gives plenty of instructions on how, exactly, to abuse children. No need for forgiveness, God told them how!
I don't remember the details of that horror book of stories anymore, but when I read it, that was the kind of stories that made an atheist out of me.
Kinda reminds me of the state of Florida discarding the policy of reporting cases of COVID back when the pandemic was raging. No reports, no problem. No reports, no COVID.
Why do we, the people, allow this shit to happen???
“dissuade people from seeking forgiveness from God”
God don't care. He sits back and watches every single child rape.
Supposedly.
Beat me to it.
The biblical god, if he were real, should be the one seeking OUR forgiveness for allowing his agents on earth to molest children for nearly the entirety of the Christian religion.
There is one characteristic common to all religions - the gods are all undetectable.
As one religious meme I have in my collection says, "Has the power to end world hunger. Watches you masturbate instead."
Jesus is far to preocupied with the impure thoughts of young boys to do anything like fix world hunger or intervene in the Holocaust.
𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑 𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑛 𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑠𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑠, “𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒, 𝐼’𝑚 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑦𝑜𝑢.” 𝐼𝑓 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑎 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑, 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑. 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝐺𝑜𝑑.
-- Tracie Harris
And while the rapist is going about his business, maybe wags his finger and says, "when you're done, I'm going to scold you."
Just a thought...
If a priest used the confessional to admit having stolen a considerable amount of money from the church to fund an obvious lavish lifestyle, what would the priest hearing the confession do?
I ask because clergy actually HAVE stolen church money to live an extravagent lifestyle. Michael Jude Fay (who eventually got 3 years), Robert Couture (he got 10 months), etc. If the seal of the confessional is inviolate, how did the authorities finally find out?
I mentioned below a few instances where the seal of confession wasn’t so inviolable, if women perpetrated the sin or if it was about money and the church. It very much is a cherry picked rule.
Dang, I missed that bit. It's what I get for speed reading though the comments to catch up/upvote people.
I’m guessing … paper trail.
Forensic accounting?
"Won't somebody please think of the children!"
DENIED!
It's not about the children.
Just read where a woman who gave birth to 5 children in 5 years wanted to get her tubes tied. She required her husband's permission (given), and the approval of the hospital board. Denied! She was under 30.
Meanwhile, her husband had a vasectomy within a week that she didn't have to approve.
The church isn't morally bankrupt. You can't lose what you didn't already have.
It's not about children, or forgiveness, and confession never stopped repeat offenders. It's about power and money.
🖕They can go and play "Put the morning star* in the hole"🖕
* Or the flail, I am not picky.
So good to have you back
So sorry to hear about your chere mere. {Still no accent marks on my computer!)
Since this is the first time I am seeing you, welcome back.
And, if I am understanding your new nym correctly, my condolences.
I’m happy to see you!!
Welcome back. Like so mny others, I too, missed you.
Welcome back from me, too. It's just plain GOOD to have you here again! 🤗
I play a hidden objects game. One of the objects was a morning star. I kept looking for a star that was sad. After many failures I finally looked it up. They were easy to find after I knew what to look for.
I just imagined you playing and looking for this Morning Star
https://images.app.goo.gl/vHJwF5S5vn3WZ8PT6
We have missed you.
Welcome back, you've been very much missed. My condolences as well.
Welcome back!
So good to see you, so sorry about your beloved mom. Much love and healing to you.
"There is not a scintilla of evidence that child abusers are confessing their sins to Catholic priests."
Well, if no child abusers are confessing their sins to priests, then priests and the Church have nothing to worry about from this law, Mr. Donohue. So why oppose it?
Sinch priests are bound to secrecy, how would they know what's being confessed?
Bildo spews "There is not a scintilla of evidence that child abusers are confessing their sins to Catholic priests."
"Sins," Bildo? They're CRIMES. Sins are no more real than your god is. Speaking of which, the RCC goes out of its way to support and defend a phantasm in the clouds for which there is not one scintilla of evidence while ignoring the damage their clergy does to the very real victims.
Why? That phantasm is their clergy's meal ticket, of course. The clergy has shown what it truly cares about. And it isn't children.
Good for those seven Montana Democratic lawmakers.
If their bill were to pass, (The weather report in hell predicts no freezing temperatures) it would be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. I'm sure that there are plenty of theocrats who would WANT it to go before THIS Supreme Court, because with their reliable pro-religion, pro-Christian, and pro-Catholic bias, they would not just preserve clerics' present immunity from reporting laws, they'd STRENGTHEN it.
Organized religion has a long history of "reforming" whenever one of its atrocious practices finally becomes just too outrageous for society to tolerate. But those reforms are like a psychopath having his suit cleaned. The only way to stop the evils of religion is to starve it to death. Don't practice it, don't defend it, don't rationalize it, and DON'T donate to it.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/hell/48169/weather-forecast/2211114
That's the second hit in my search results. The first hit was for Washington, IA.?
I found this site just before retiring from 35 years as a Jesus Huckster. I am indebted to Hemant. and all the rest of you for making my transition from theism so easy.
I can not remember a time when someone who came to me confessing of crimes against children.
However, if someone had confessed to child abuse, my next call would have been to Child Protective Services. Even if the United Methodist Church had not required clergy to be a mandated reporter, I can not imagine keeping that a secret.
Glad to have you with us!
As a Catholic schoolchild, I was required to go to confession every week. I once contemplated telling the priest I wanted to kill one of my classmates because he beat me up on a regular basis and the priests and nuns at the school wouldn't do anything to stop it. i knew, however, that I'd be the one to get into trouble for it. Once I was out of that school, I stopped going to confession altogether. After all, I stopped believing in that stuff by the time I was ten.
I was about that age when I left mentally. I was still forced to go to kkkatlik guolag and put up with nuns spouting hated of me every day..
About a year after First Confession (I would have been 9), I noticed that I was making up stuff, just to have something to say, when I was forced into going to confesson each week. I asked my mom what to do. She shrugged and blew me off, saying "everybody does that." So, every time I was forced into this stupid ritual, I continued to make shit up, til I finally ditched the whole thing when I ran away at 17. Did I ever discuss this with any priest, nun, or other religious adult? Why should I? They'd just told me I wouldn't be taken seriously!
I was raised atheist and watched/ helped a lot of people along the way to reality. Ten to twelve is the age the ones who actually make it start. This shit really does damage your mind as a kid--lots of people get lost in some woo-woo nonsense, or fascism, along the way.
A lot of people get stuck in agnosticism, to which I say: If you are not equally agnostic to the existence of Harry Potter as you are to the existence of your god, you are not agnostic. You are religious with doubts.
At about age seven, your brain develops enough to reality check your information. You can spot that moment when the kid stops believing in Santa Claus. But then the kid is hit with functionally infinite pressure to believe this other Santa Claus For Grown Ups is actually real, and it really messes people up. It seems very, very hard to hold onto rationality across your whole life. Look at all those old white guys who just had a hissy fit with the FFRF for not platforming bigotry. Whatever they might have had in their youth that garnered them their platform, they lost entirely.
George Carlin kept it to the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpawdjeH-8w
Boldly into the fray dives the RCC, defending the (dis)honor of the Jehovah's Witnesses! Even though they can't stand the sight of one another on any other day of the week, when it comes time to circle the wagons around some holy-rolling rapists, 𝘴𝘶𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘭𝘺 they're all on the same page. Funny, that.
Seems like every major religious organization on the planet has the same damn problem with raping children- gee whiz, it's almost as though there's 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 about having a position of authority accountable only to an imaginary friend that makes being a religious leader an inherently attractive profession for predators!
All that kiddie diddling points to the fact that religion is inherently broken.
NEVER...
https://scontent-ord5-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/475173262_1859681041484916_4641912337521495296_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_p552x414_tt6&_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=pcCIzXK9u4QQ7kNvgEqrLwy&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-3.xx&_nc_gid=AT1UF8jP7sQlqj3-pKIeLgq&oh=00_AYBTydUhTCwlyNDK4Oli93noxIBnF4t4Z_7G3gadMKY_tg&oe=679DA9CE
The current law states:
"(c) A member of the clergy or a priest is not required to make a report under this section if the communication is required to be confidential by canon law, church doctrine, or established church practice."
In other words: "The internal rules of some private association take precedence over the law."
In what universe was it possible to include this abomination into the law.
"The optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true."
Suffer the children, indeed.
I find it highly instructive that the RCC does everything it can to avoid being held liable for its own actions or lack thereof. Note here that we're talking about a law intended to protect some of the most vulnerable members of society; the goal here isn't some burden intended to destroy the RCC as an entity. 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼'𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑙𝑎𝑤𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑢𝑙𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑠. This is, from what I'm seeing, the RCC admitting they are an enemy of humanity and that they do not care when the vulnerable are made victims; the RCC cares more about "Holy Mother Church" than they do about people. With that in mind, I'd say that every government entity around should consider ending any and all privileges the RCC may have enjoyed to this point. The RCC can, has, and will continue to abuse any privileges they can lay their grubby hands on.
And if we're going to be honest here, the SBC is in the same boat along with a few others.
The reason that the Vatican won’t allow researchers and scholars full access to the Vatican’s archives is due to the fact that the full extent of the church’s Crimes Against Humanity would then be exposed.
It was Hitler's knowledge of pedo rapes by priests in Germany that allowed him to silence the pope. Basically the vatican opened itself up to blackmail for its complicity in child rapes. See Kertzer's "The Pope at War."
Oh, I had not known that. Or forgotten it if I did.
Absolutely, Jimmy Carter called the SBC out, and left the church.