Some Friendly Advice
If you like or are neutral about the Catholic Church, you might remind them “It’s not the crime – It’s the cover-up!”
The Church really needs to get DonoWho off of people’s TV screens. His “blame the victim” schtick is really annoying and not helping anyone.
I covered the Pedophile versus Ephebophile conflict of definitions during the Mark Foley debacle, but it is irrelevant because those are definitions from the Social Sciences. To quote myself:
It might surprise people, but the penal [criminal] law generally breaks the population down to two groups, adult or child, and the age of differentiation is 18. The age of consent is almost always limited to the definition of a specific crime, statutory rape, and not a determining factor in other crimes where the 18 year-old standard is used.
Puberty doesn’t occur at any particular age, it occurs at different times for different people, although most endure it during middle school/junior high. It is not a factor in throwing your tail in jail if you have sex with someone younger than the age of consent, usually 16.
The Church is not doing itself any favors by attempting to stonewall these problems, or by attacking those reporting on them. They are only digging themselves into a deeper hole, having retreated from the moral high ground.
4 comments
Bryan, when in all of history did the Church occupy that “moral high ground” you believe it has now retreated from? Sorry, but I cannot recall reading about such a time. [/cynical]
.-= last blog ..Court: Bush Wiretapping Illegal =-.
Well, the reigns of John XXIII and Paul VI were certainly moral, and concerned with the betterment of people. They opened things up, and reached out to the world. Of course, it could have simply been the 1960s.
This kind of rationalization reminds me of a friend of mine who was enamored of teenaged — as in 13 years old — boys (and spent some time as a guest of the federal government for his collection of photos). He rationalized it by saying that it was acceptable in Morocco and that as a gay man, I should understand. I replied, a) you’re not in Morocco, and b) stop thinking that what you’re doing is gay. It’s not, and get the hell away from me.
.-= last blog ..Is It Healthcare Yet? =-.
The so-called “sex crimes” are really assaults, crimes of violence. Of all of them the only one that might be a crime strictly about sex is statutory rape, and then, only if the people involved are very close in age.
These are crimes about power, not sex. These are crimes about control, not love.
It is Easter, and the Catholic hierarchy is talking about the bad press they are receiving, while the Australian Christian leaders are talking about atheists. What happened to talking about the Resurrection?