I find this situation sickening, but unsurprising. Pedophiles go where the kids are, and a bureaucratic institution like the RCC will always tilt toward self-preservation. I walked away from the Catholic Church nearly sixty years ago. I was about nine months into my tour in Vietnam and in a pretty dark place. I went to church for the last time as any kind of a believer, when we were all treated to what one guy called a ‘Kill a Commie for Christ’ pep talk. According to that idiot priest, we were among God’s chosen sent to protect mother church against the godless. There may have been someone there that day who bought that nonsense, but the great majority only wanted to survive and go home. I walked away and never looked back. The years have only reinforced that decision for me.
There's nothing much to be surprised about the perfidies the Catholic Church is willing to commit. What I would LOVE to be surprised by is the response of secular law enforcement in disregarding the supposed piety of men of the cloth.
That cloth needs to be stripped down, to expose the rot underneath.
The “church” has never been about spirituality. It has always been about multifaceted power and control. The stage was set with one sentence, “We are the chosen ones”. Then, the Roman subjects were compelled to usurp that claim, to gain power and control. Then, the Arabs of the fallen Byzantine empire challenged those power structures with the appointment of Muhammad. AND NOW, today DJT and his “appointed leaders”, are attempting to claim power and control over the entire world. And standing in the wings you find Peter Thiel, Vance, AI tech bros, etc. hard at work creating an AI generated Antichrist to bring this power structure to fruition. At this moment there are thousands of misguided believers on their knees, praying for the destruction of the Dome on the Temple Mount. These power structures have literally commandeered the spirituality of all mankind, the human race. We must claim our own spirituality, and not allow ourselves to be ruled and dictated to by these mire mortals.
Personally, I have no use for the word or concept of "spirituality." Its root base is still "spirit," and I've yet to find any such spirits loitering about anywhere. That said, if someone wants to talk about wonder or numinous experiences, that is entirely a separate matter, and one that does not need religion to appreciate. I will also grant that terminology here is slipperier than a greased eel and definitions vague at best.
The clear problem is that religion wants to arrogate such experiences to itself as supposed support and verification of its relevancy. To that, I have a one-word rebuttal:
In the 'there exist immaterial objects' sense, yeah...not so much. But in the 'there exist nonmaterial values' sense, it's fine. Someone values the experience of a yoga retreat more than the purchase of a new car, you go be that sort of spiritual.
Damn, oraxx. That was a horrible thing to have happened. The church preaches that everyone is created in the image and likeness of god, but look how quickly 'people of god' are reduced to 'commies' when it suits the church's purpose. I'm glad you walked away from that foolishness, but also sorry you had to go through that when you were already in a dark place.
History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
1000 years ago, the clergy were busy telling good Christians everywhere that God really wanted them to kill the horrible saracens so that the church could take back the hilariously misnamed “holy land“. The saracens were busy telling good Mohammedans* everywhere the reverse.
500 years ago, the Catholic clergy were busy telling good Catholic Christians everywhere theyat God really wanted them to kill the horrible protestants, and vice versa.
In the last few days, we have had several Christian ministers telling good MAGAtous Americans, usually Christians, that they really needed to wipe out the Muslim Iranians, because as the Holy Arm of our fornicating and adulterous Junior Leader says “DEUS VULT”. Pastor Shane Vaughan— there’s a charming man o’ god fer ya. Iranian religious authorities seem to have the same idea, except the reverse.
I’m so sorry to hear about your experience. It’s truly heartbreaking. It takes more strength to walk away from the herd and can often feel isolating, but ultimately it sets you free ✨
If a restaurant chain had a history of molesting children even a fraction of the scale of the RCC, there would be a nationwide outcry to shut that restaurant chain down, followed by unceasing demands to prosecute that chain.
Where is the call to hold Holy Mother Church accountable?
How many times has one or another of us said it? "If this had been ANY OTHER ORGANIZATION..." Yet it continues to be the Catholic Church, and now JWs and evangelical churches being revealed as nests of child abuse as well, and too frequently being given the same hands-off treatment.
I would really like to know what it would take to get people to wake up to what's going on here.
But it's hard to imagine a restaurant chain getting into this situation, since they'd have zero problem just firing any suspected molester immediately and handing everything they know over to the police. IOW, McDonald's is more moral than the RCC.
I recall the open boycott of Subway when their main spokesman Jared Fogle was caught in a child sex sting and sentenced to 15 years. It absolutely affected their bottom line as nobody wanted to eat there anymore.
Turns out they likely had one employee testimony for his behavior starting around 2008 (he was arrested in 2015). So yup, looks like similar a corporate cover-up to protect their own reputation. 300 Subway molesters though....yeah that would've likely sent the entire chain into bankruptcy.
In that same statement, he referenced how he picked "Delcy in Venezuela" - and we all know why. She handed him a large cut of her country's oil revenues.
We never learn from history. Installing an Iranian leader that the people didn't choose is exactly what caused the country to hate the US and fight our interests unrelentingly for the past 50 years.
IOW, Trump issued a press release that bids are now open for who gets to be the next dictator of Iran, only best and final offers will be considered. I'm guessing the 'vetting committee' includes Kushner and Witcoff.
"A Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by Trump was sentenced to life in prison for child sex abuse
Just months after President Trump's mass pardons for Jan. 6 rioters freed him from prison, a Florida man repeatedly sexually abused two middle-school aged children.
On Thursday, the man, Andrew Paul Johnson, was sentenced to life in prison, after a Florida jury found him guilty of five criminal charges, including molestation, lewd and lascivious exhibition and transmission of material harmful to a minor.
Police reported that Johnson, 45, tried to keep the children quiet by telling them he would share millions of dollars in restitution money he expected to receive from the Trump administration in connection with his Jan. 6 case.
"He said not to tell anybody," one of Johnson's victims testified."
It's what led to Ireland finally coming into the modern world. The Father Ted comedy series, which portrayed a country still largely under the control of the RCC, was made in the 1990s.
OT: Hoo boy, there’s an op-ed in WaPo in which some evangelical Christian whines that evangelicals are underrepresented in powerful American institutions. None on SCOTUS. Not enough in universities. Hardly any CEOs. And the US would be better off if evangelical perspectives were represented.
I was raised Catholic. In my late teens I began to question Catholicism. I became agnostic while I investigated the beliefs of other religious traditions, at first the other Abrahamic religions, then the larger non-Abrahamic religions. And what I found in common between them led me to realize that the odds there is any sort of deity are vanishingly small. So like many atheists I have encountered, I do not believe in the existence of any god but am willing to change my mind if one ever shows up. Since then the repeated evils committed by so many religions through history and currently have turned me into an opponent of religion, organized and non-organized. The very idea that so many systems that claim to promote love and peace instead promote hate and violence and pain drives my hatred of them.
Truer words than "Religion poisons everything." may have never been spoken.
Brought to you by the political party that dismantled DEI because they think somehow it detracts from an all-merit system.
So here's my tiny violin playing for you, and since your poliics are all about ignoring identity in favor of merit, then if you want to be in these positions, stop pointing out you're an evangelical and earn it, biatches.
Boston. Pennsylvania, and now Providence (along with others that don't come to mind right now). This is the crap that is going on in the Catholic Church and that CONTINUES to happen, despite media exposure. Worse, the diocese of Providence refuses to cooperate with the investigation.
Sounds like time to take the kid gloves off and FORCE cooperation. I have little doubt but that there is sufficient probable cause to go into the offices of the diocese and seize records and documents that would testify to exactly what has been going on within the Church's walls and who the perpetrators are.
This crap has been going on for CENTURIES, likely over a millennium, and it has become clear that the Roman Catholic Church will not clean its own house or police its own personnel. Action will have to come from outside.
And if it doesn't, kids will continue to be abused.
“There are no credibly accused clergy in active ministry,” said Bishop Bruce Lewandowski in a video statement. “Today’s Catholic clergy here in Rhode Island are much better at discrediting accusers and covering up their crimes so as to leave no credible evidence than they were in the past."
How many brooms has that idiot worn out from attempting to sweep despicable stuff like this under a rug or whatever? I wonder, has he ever debated someone from our side of the aisle on any of this? Such a debate would be ... interesting.
And, to quote a certain fictional Air Force Captain, "'Interesting' is a word-and-a-half for it."
Hmph. Elsewhere here, I've asked for encouragement that maybe faith is losing its traction in the US. It's awfully nice to actually see some such evidence.
Yet again, this (and the current war) broadens our understanding of how power goes unchecked when it hides behind the veil of religion which we are told not to question, criticize, or investigate.
“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.” - Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)
Somehow I doubt that C.S. Lewis get's quote here very often, but this is apposite:
"Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations."
This story is a great example of something that's been bugging me quite a bit in the last year or so. I've mentioned it before, but I think it needs repeating; so many Christians don't believe in rule of law anymore.
Yes, the actions of these criminals-of-the-cloth are horrible and deserve serious jail time, yes the RCC needs to be accountable for its behavior. But the real problem in my mind is that the RCC simply doesn't think it needs to answer to ANY earthly authority for any reason, only to Jesus. The RCC honestly seems of a mind that 'Holy Mother Church' is exempt or should be exempt from written law in every case. What's worse is that so many other sects of Christians have adopted that same thought, and they don't even agree with each other. It's pretty much a recipe for a hot mess the likes of which the world might not survive, and from everything I've seen, the MAGA crowd is trying to make it happen.
Rule of law only really works when everyone obeys and respects the law as the physical form of the social contract. When smaller groups start insisting on special allowances just for their group and nobody else, everything falls apart. This game of legal Jenga we're seeing from churches/Trump is playing out that collapse in real time.
The catholic church is the OG Epstein ring of international pedophiles and their protectors. And that protection racket continues to this day. When the RI diocese, even at this late date, does the bare minimum to 'cooperate' with a state investigation, they think they deserve a gold star. Nobody should take seriously any claims from pedo protectors that 'there are no credibly accused clergy in active ministry' today. Who decides which reports are 'credible'? 'Inactive' clergy could simply be 'on retreat' like their predecessors, only to pop up somewhere else when attention has moved on.
Why anybody would have anything to do with an organization that's just bad as Epstein and his clients is beyond comprehension, especially if those members have young children.
I think the Epstein ring and the Catholic Church are one in the same. Powerful men, zero accountability.
What I think is hilarious is that so many folks are running around saying he’s doing this or that to distract from the Epstein files. NO he’s not! None of them are worried about any of this! They simply
In cases like my younger sister I think the denial is intentional. She has a history of ignoring facts. Our father was 58 when she was born; he passed away at 90. She still says that she thought he would be around for her for much longer than that.
Wow, your sister has a bad case of denialism. But I suspect you're right about people who stay with the church in spite of the continuing revelations about clergy sexual abuse of children. How many 'bad apples' does it take for people to wake up?
I find this situation sickening, but unsurprising. Pedophiles go where the kids are, and a bureaucratic institution like the RCC will always tilt toward self-preservation. I walked away from the Catholic Church nearly sixty years ago. I was about nine months into my tour in Vietnam and in a pretty dark place. I went to church for the last time as any kind of a believer, when we were all treated to what one guy called a ‘Kill a Commie for Christ’ pep talk. According to that idiot priest, we were among God’s chosen sent to protect mother church against the godless. There may have been someone there that day who bought that nonsense, but the great majority only wanted to survive and go home. I walked away and never looked back. The years have only reinforced that decision for me.
There's nothing much to be surprised about the perfidies the Catholic Church is willing to commit. What I would LOVE to be surprised by is the response of secular law enforcement in disregarding the supposed piety of men of the cloth.
That cloth needs to be stripped down, to expose the rot underneath.
The “church” has never been about spirituality. It has always been about multifaceted power and control. The stage was set with one sentence, “We are the chosen ones”. Then, the Roman subjects were compelled to usurp that claim, to gain power and control. Then, the Arabs of the fallen Byzantine empire challenged those power structures with the appointment of Muhammad. AND NOW, today DJT and his “appointed leaders”, are attempting to claim power and control over the entire world. And standing in the wings you find Peter Thiel, Vance, AI tech bros, etc. hard at work creating an AI generated Antichrist to bring this power structure to fruition. At this moment there are thousands of misguided believers on their knees, praying for the destruction of the Dome on the Temple Mount. These power structures have literally commandeered the spirituality of all mankind, the human race. We must claim our own spirituality, and not allow ourselves to be ruled and dictated to by these mire mortals.
Personally, I have no use for the word or concept of "spirituality." Its root base is still "spirit," and I've yet to find any such spirits loitering about anywhere. That said, if someone wants to talk about wonder or numinous experiences, that is entirely a separate matter, and one that does not need religion to appreciate. I will also grant that terminology here is slipperier than a greased eel and definitions vague at best.
The clear problem is that religion wants to arrogate such experiences to itself as supposed support and verification of its relevancy. To that, I have a one-word rebuttal:
BULLSHIT.
In the 'there exist immaterial objects' sense, yeah...not so much. But in the 'there exist nonmaterial values' sense, it's fine. Someone values the experience of a yoga retreat more than the purchase of a new car, you go be that sort of spiritual.
Damn, oraxx. That was a horrible thing to have happened. The church preaches that everyone is created in the image and likeness of god, but look how quickly 'people of god' are reduced to 'commies' when it suits the church's purpose. I'm glad you walked away from that foolishness, but also sorry you had to go through that when you were already in a dark place.
History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
1000 years ago, the clergy were busy telling good Christians everywhere that God really wanted them to kill the horrible saracens so that the church could take back the hilariously misnamed “holy land“. The saracens were busy telling good Mohammedans* everywhere the reverse.
500 years ago, the Catholic clergy were busy telling good Catholic Christians everywhere theyat God really wanted them to kill the horrible protestants, and vice versa.
In the last few days, we have had several Christian ministers telling good MAGAtous Americans, usually Christians, that they really needed to wipe out the Muslim Iranians, because as the Holy Arm of our fornicating and adulterous Junior Leader says “DEUS VULT”. Pastor Shane Vaughan— there’s a charming man o’ god fer ya. Iranian religious authorities seem to have the same idea, except the reverse.
I’m beginning to sense a pattern here.
*antiquated terminology appropriate and intended
I’m so sorry to hear about your experience. It’s truly heartbreaking. It takes more strength to walk away from the herd and can often feel isolating, but ultimately it sets you free ✨
If a restaurant chain had a history of molesting children even a fraction of the scale of the RCC, there would be a nationwide outcry to shut that restaurant chain down, followed by unceasing demands to prosecute that chain.
Where is the call to hold Holy Mother Church accountable?
Religion excuses a lot of mental illness, and it often blinds people to the reality before their eyes.
How many times has one or another of us said it? "If this had been ANY OTHER ORGANIZATION..." Yet it continues to be the Catholic Church, and now JWs and evangelical churches being revealed as nests of child abuse as well, and too frequently being given the same hands-off treatment.
I would really like to know what it would take to get people to wake up to what's going on here.
There are child sexual abuse entries for the SBC (second only to the RCC), Episcopalians, Mormons and even the freaking Amish.
Christianity is broken beyond repair.
Religion is broken beyond repair.
I would say all religions are a threat to humanity!
Good point.
But it's hard to imagine a restaurant chain getting into this situation, since they'd have zero problem just firing any suspected molester immediately and handing everything they know over to the police. IOW, McDonald's is more moral than the RCC.
I recall the open boycott of Subway when their main spokesman Jared Fogle was caught in a child sex sting and sentenced to 15 years. It absolutely affected their bottom line as nobody wanted to eat there anymore.
Turns out they likely had one employee testimony for his behavior starting around 2008 (he was arrested in 2015). So yup, looks like similar a corporate cover-up to protect their own reputation. 300 Subway molesters though....yeah that would've likely sent the entire chain into bankruptcy.
OT:
"Trump says he wants to be involved in picking Iran’s next leader"
https://apnews.com/article/iran-israel-us-march-05-2026-6a76668997a43855cc37eff7f4829615
Makes sense, just like Putin was involved in tRump's election.
"Involved," nuts; he wants to CHOOSE Iran's next leader unilaterally! I'd bet on that!
In that same statement, he referenced how he picked "Delcy in Venezuela" - and we all know why. She handed him a large cut of her country's oil revenues.
Yes, at the expense of benefiting her own country!
We never learn from history. Installing an Iranian leader that the people didn't choose is exactly what caused the country to hate the US and fight our interests unrelentingly for the past 50 years.
IOW, Trump issued a press release that bids are now open for who gets to be the next dictator of Iran, only best and final offers will be considered. I'm guessing the 'vetting committee' includes Kushner and Witcoff.
Kushner does understand how to get people in the Middle East to give him large sums of money...
TRUMP: “Would anyone mind if I chose a Shah? Anyone?”
Maybe Donny can move there and vote 😎
If you still belong to the Catholic Church and still support them financially, then you are enabling child sexual abuse. PERIOD.
The most shocking part of this is the cult members who explain it away as an aberration and remain in the child rape cult.
Silence=complicity
Shall I quote in Latin?
At this point we should just call it the Epstein Church. Or, because he likes to plaster his name everywhere, the Donald J. Trump - Epstein Church.
Related:
"A Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by Trump was sentenced to life in prison for child sex abuse
Just months after President Trump's mass pardons for Jan. 6 rioters freed him from prison, a Florida man repeatedly sexually abused two middle-school aged children.
On Thursday, the man, Andrew Paul Johnson, was sentenced to life in prison, after a Florida jury found him guilty of five criminal charges, including molestation, lewd and lascivious exhibition and transmission of material harmful to a minor.
Police reported that Johnson, 45, tried to keep the children quiet by telling them he would share millions of dollars in restitution money he expected to receive from the Trump administration in connection with his Jan. 6 case.
"He said not to tell anybody," one of Johnson's victims testified."
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/05/nx-s1-5725470/trump-jan-6-pardon-sexual-abuse-prison
Trump supporters = goddamm fucking brain dead scumbag assholes (a that are their good qualities).
The Sacred Heart Church of the Most Holy Pedophile.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒, 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑎𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑜𝑟𝑠 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑠𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑎𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑒.
The true scope of the abuse will make you wonder why anyone supports the church.
Hold protests outside churches during Mass with protesters waving signs and chanting ENABLERS! ENABLERS! ENABLERS!
The Trump DOJ would arrest us. Just for the clicks. Later a judge would drop the charges.
It's what led to Ireland finally coming into the modern world. The Father Ted comedy series, which portrayed a country still largely under the control of the RCC, was made in the 1990s.
OT: Hoo boy, there’s an op-ed in WaPo in which some evangelical Christian whines that evangelicals are underrepresented in powerful American institutions. None on SCOTUS. Not enough in universities. Hardly any CEOs. And the US would be better off if evangelical perspectives were represented.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/06/evangelicals-christian-supreme-court-university-business-trust/
Evangelicals make me more of an anti-theist each and every day.
You ain't alone, Len!
I wasn't an anti theist at first, just an atheist but since Reagan I have been strongly anti theist.
I was raised Catholic. In my late teens I began to question Catholicism. I became agnostic while I investigated the beliefs of other religious traditions, at first the other Abrahamic religions, then the larger non-Abrahamic religions. And what I found in common between them led me to realize that the odds there is any sort of deity are vanishingly small. So like many atheists I have encountered, I do not believe in the existence of any god but am willing to change my mind if one ever shows up. Since then the repeated evils committed by so many religions through history and currently have turned me into an opponent of religion, organized and non-organized. The very idea that so many systems that claim to promote love and peace instead promote hate and violence and pain drives my hatred of them.
Truer words than "Religion poisons everything." may have never been spoken.
Brought to you by the political party that dismantled DEI because they think somehow it detracts from an all-merit system.
So here's my tiny violin playing for you, and since your poliics are all about ignoring identity in favor of merit, then if you want to be in these positions, stop pointing out you're an evangelical and earn it, biatches.
For "all-merit" read: "ALL-WHITE." 🤢🤮
No cross-dressers. No "wokeness". No trans-people.
No surprise.
Boston. Pennsylvania, and now Providence (along with others that don't come to mind right now). This is the crap that is going on in the Catholic Church and that CONTINUES to happen, despite media exposure. Worse, the diocese of Providence refuses to cooperate with the investigation.
Sounds like time to take the kid gloves off and FORCE cooperation. I have little doubt but that there is sufficient probable cause to go into the offices of the diocese and seize records and documents that would testify to exactly what has been going on within the Church's walls and who the perpetrators are.
This crap has been going on for CENTURIES, likely over a millennium, and it has become clear that the Roman Catholic Church will not clean its own house or police its own personnel. Action will have to come from outside.
And if it doesn't, kids will continue to be abused.
“There are no credibly accused clergy in active ministry,” said Bishop Bruce Lewandowski in a video statement. “Today’s Catholic clergy here in Rhode Island are much better at discrediting accusers and covering up their crimes so as to leave no credible evidence than they were in the past."
Fixed!
You can always trust a guy named Lewandowski, right?
I guess now he'll have to smuggle her onto the planes or start paying for cheap motel rooms.
I predict he becomes a Special Government Employee for that new Shield of the Americas gig.
No quotes from Bildo on this yet?
Maybe he realizes he can't sweep THIS under the rug.
How many brooms has that idiot worn out from attempting to sweep despicable stuff like this under a rug or whatever? I wonder, has he ever debated someone from our side of the aisle on any of this? Such a debate would be ... interesting.
And, to quote a certain fictional Air Force Captain, "'Interesting' is a word-and-a-half for it."
Just the one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56yN2zHtofM
Here we go: Hitch v. Bilbo
https://www.youtube.com/live/0uvsUPwfmds?si=x6zJ7e6m7uHpI3oA
I have a vague and possibly mistaken memory that someone here linked to a debate between him and an atheist 6-9 months ago. I’m probably wrong.
The link was 6-9 months ago. Not the debate.
OT: Pew Research: Do you need 'god' to be a good person. In murica, 68% polled say no.
In the U.S. and other countries, fewer people now say it’s necessary to believe in God to be moral
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/05/in-the-us-and-other-countries-fewer-people-now-say-its-necessary-to-believe-in-god-to-be-moral/
Hmph. Elsewhere here, I've asked for encouragement that maybe faith is losing its traction in the US. It's awfully nice to actually see some such evidence.
I think the polling fails on one level: with younger people who don't participate in such things. Many of them are disgusted by religion.
They have PLENTY to be disgusted about ... as do we.
Yet again, this (and the current war) broadens our understanding of how power goes unchecked when it hides behind the veil of religion which we are told not to question, criticize, or investigate.
“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.” - Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)
Somehow I doubt that C.S. Lewis get's quote here very often, but this is apposite:
"Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations."
Whoa! The creator of Narnia, fouling his own nest? That IS a surprise!
They never met, but Freud might have had an influence on Lewis.
Lewis liked to suck on a large, brown cock too?
There’s no historical evidence that Freud ever did the humpty hump with a like-minded fellow.
Damn that’s good!
OT:
Gotta love it:
"Vandal Strikes Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, Rebrands It “Fat Nixon”"
https://www.thealtmedia.com/p/vandal-strikes-trump-national-golf
Or in Trump's case, Fart Nixon.
(The word "trump" is Brit slang for "fart")
This story is a great example of something that's been bugging me quite a bit in the last year or so. I've mentioned it before, but I think it needs repeating; so many Christians don't believe in rule of law anymore.
Yes, the actions of these criminals-of-the-cloth are horrible and deserve serious jail time, yes the RCC needs to be accountable for its behavior. But the real problem in my mind is that the RCC simply doesn't think it needs to answer to ANY earthly authority for any reason, only to Jesus. The RCC honestly seems of a mind that 'Holy Mother Church' is exempt or should be exempt from written law in every case. What's worse is that so many other sects of Christians have adopted that same thought, and they don't even agree with each other. It's pretty much a recipe for a hot mess the likes of which the world might not survive, and from everything I've seen, the MAGA crowd is trying to make it happen.
Rule of law only really works when everyone obeys and respects the law as the physical form of the social contract. When smaller groups start insisting on special allowances just for their group and nobody else, everything falls apart. This game of legal Jenga we're seeing from churches/Trump is playing out that collapse in real time.
"so many Christians don't believe in rule of law anymore."
I feel this has been the case for a few decades now.
Centuries. Millennium(s).
I just something similar! You are spot on with that point!
The catholic church is the OG Epstein ring of international pedophiles and their protectors. And that protection racket continues to this day. When the RI diocese, even at this late date, does the bare minimum to 'cooperate' with a state investigation, they think they deserve a gold star. Nobody should take seriously any claims from pedo protectors that 'there are no credibly accused clergy in active ministry' today. Who decides which reports are 'credible'? 'Inactive' clergy could simply be 'on retreat' like their predecessors, only to pop up somewhere else when attention has moved on.
Why anybody would have anything to do with an organization that's just bad as Epstein and his clients is beyond comprehension, especially if those members have young children.
I think the Epstein ring and the Catholic Church are one in the same. Powerful men, zero accountability.
What I think is hilarious is that so many folks are running around saying he’s doing this or that to distract from the Epstein files. NO he’s not! None of them are worried about any of this! They simply
don’t
care
what we think.
That Venn diagram is probably a circle.
In cases like my younger sister I think the denial is intentional. She has a history of ignoring facts. Our father was 58 when she was born; he passed away at 90. She still says that she thought he would be around for her for much longer than that.
Wow, your sister has a bad case of denialism. But I suspect you're right about people who stay with the church in spite of the continuing revelations about clergy sexual abuse of children. How many 'bad apples' does it take for people to wake up?