That's a joke, told by Pete Davidson on "SNL," quoted in
"Pete Davidson made a joke on SNL about the Catholic Church. Now officials are demanding an apology" (WaPo).
Definitely not amused was the Catholic Church’s Diocese of Brooklyn, which on Monday released a lengthy statement condemning the joke and seeking an “immediate public apology” from the sketch comedy show and from NBC, the network that airs it. “The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions,” the statement reads, in part. “The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.”
Here's the lengthy statement from the Diocese of Brooklyn. Excerpt:
Apparently, the only acceptable bias these days is against the Catholic Church.
Oh!
You're the victim.
The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions. The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.
It's the Era of That's Not Funny, but has the Catholic Church ever had a sense of humor? It's a "difficult time" for the Catholic Church because the
Church actively closed off our view of the problem. If you'd been open about it all these years, would our jokes about you have had a "purpose"? What is the general principle that the Diocese of Brooklyn is trying to state? It seems to be: It's wrong to react with jokes when we get
news about X because
the news is already hurting X — X is the victim and we, the jokesters, are the bullies. That's rich!
The clergy sex abuse crisis is shameful, and no one should ever get a laugh at the expense of the victims who have suffered irreparably....
And by "victims," you mean the Church? Because that's the only target of the joke. What's the general rule here? If X victimizes Y, it's wrong to joke about X, because it makes light of the entire situation and that hurts Y. Maybe, but if it's
X who invokes the rule, can we at least laugh about
that?
It is likely that no other institution has done more than the Catholic Church to combat and prevent sexual abuse.
Oh, now you're making your own joke? Or... the only way I can understand this is as a confession of the vast, horrific scale of the abuse. It's not that you've done so much in proportion to the problem, but that you've got such a huge problem.
The insensitivity of the writers, producers, and the cast of SNL around this painful subject is alarming.
Ridiculous. The reason SNL's joke hurt so much is that it directly provokes your adherents to get the hell out. I'm sure that is alarming.
Posts
267 comments:
1 – 200 of 267 Newer› Newest»Wow the prof goes on a rant. The seething resentment of Christians comes through loud and clear. Don't know the genesis of that hatred.
Sex abuse definitely happens in the Church.
I've had the misfortune of seeing and encountering a lot of sexual abuse. In all aspects of our society and in every institution.
I suspect that sexual abuse in the schools is as bad or worse.
The Church has been singled out by the left, and by Althouse's Marxist feminism. I suggest you read Dorothy Rabinowitz's work on this subject. The sexual abuse attack on the Church is a concerted effort by leftists and Marxist feminists to drive children out of the Church.
The left is obsessed with hatred of the Church because it believes that the Church somehow prevents people from getting laid.
What I'm saying is not no defense of sexual abuse within the Church. I'm just saying sexual abuse is everywhere. Althouse is a Marxist feminist, and thus, an enemy of the Church.
At what point are today’s Catholics no longer tied to past child abuse?
At what point are today’s white people no longer tied to slavery?
At what point are today’s Democrats no longer tied to Jim Crow laws, segregation, and the KKK?
It seems only one of these has an answer.
What group is more sexually abusive than Althouse's glorious gay men?
You've got to immerse yourself in the gay orgy scene in NYC if you have any ambitious to be a serious actor.
37 million dead from the AIDS epidemic, started by gay men. You notice Althouse never has a word to say on this subject.
Setting the table for the deaths of 37 million people is pretty abusive, Althouse.
Somehow, you moved from that to gay beatification.
Everybody hates and condemns sexual abuse, except within their own group.
You're no different, Althouse.
Somebody bribed a coach on Pete Davidson’s behalf.
The left is obsessed with hatred of the Church because it believes that the Church somehow prevents people from getting laid.
It’s because it teaches a morality separate from class struggle and public taking.
Is Althouse still raping puppies?
Yah, Ima stand away from Ann in a lightning storm.
Meanwhile, publiuc school teachers are constantly being caught, charged and convicted for abusing children, but nobody brands all Teachers as pedophiles, just all Priests. It's almost like there's an agenda...
@Lincontf
Notice that the press hasn’t launched a campaign of constant surveillance and investigation of public school teachers as a result of their own reports about teachers raping and abusing students.
Public school teachers are Democratic Party constituents.
Comics are people who figured out a way to get paid to be assholes.
Has there been a long term widespread systematic coverup of child abuse in public schools similar to the coverup in the Catholic Church? If so, it has been a very effective coverup.
"What I'm saying is not no defense of sexual abuse within the Church. I'm just saying sexual abuse is everywhere. "
Interesting double negative there. I don't doubt sexual abuse takes place nearly everywhere. Covering it up does not.
I would have hated to be a child and have gone to McDonalds, only to be ass-raped by Ronald McDonald in a rather clean restroom.
Because, despite what the clown said, it wasn't worth the extra toy in my Happy Meal.
Now, I understand that doesn't happen at all McDonalds, but I think I would probably feel nervous whenever driving past Golden Arches.
Or hearing the expression 'secret sauce'.
I am Laslo.
Has there been a cover up in public schools?
We don’t know, do we?
The Democrat Press isn’t focused on destroying public schools.
The problems in the Catholic Church stemmed from a desire to protect and defend the clergy that exceeded the desire to protect and defend the flock. Bad shepherds never work out well.
Meade is right - the major problem with singling out the Catholic church isn't the abuse itself (although that's certainly widespread) but the systematic coverup by the leadership. And in that way it eclipses the public school shenanigans. And in that way it's also similar to the R Kelly situation in that it was enabled by many from start to finish.
I understand the sensitivity of Catholics to the subject, but maybe if they directed more vitriol back to the church instead of attacking those that condemn (or crack jokes) this could have been tackled a century ago.
I mean, they can teach you about 'Stranger Danger' and 'bad touches', but -- come on -- it was Ronald. How can you not trust an adult man dressed as a clown getting paid minimum wage?
The worst part was that afterward, having washed the tears from my eyes, there were no paper towels so I had to try to put my face beneath the warm air blower.
And fucking Mayor McCheese just acts like it never happened.
I am Laslo.
The notion that sexual abuse can be easily banished is incredibly naive.
War is the primary incubator of sexual abuse.
The psychological trauma of war cannot be wished away or therapized away.
Interestingly, the left’s fix for sexual abuse is the ordination of gay priests.
Perverts are the answer. Because...
Gay culture is incredibly riddled with pedophilia.
Don’t give me the bullshit that noticing this is bigotry.
Public Schools, private schools, Boy Scouts, Big Brothers, youth sports, church youth ministry: they've all had a problem with sexual predators.
The Catholic Church is the biggest target because of the instances of active cover-ups by some members of the Church hierarchy.
And Anne Althouse is a Marxist? WTF?
Oops, that's Ann Althouse.
Music went downhill when they got rid of castrati.
Althouse is not an all around Marxist. Only when it comes to her identity politics self-interest, gaydom and feminism.
Grouping women as a class with a grievance against men is Marxism. If you haven’t notice, this is one of the professor’s obsessions.
All feminism is Marxism. There is no feminism that is not Marxist. Althouse is a Marxist feminist.
"I don't doubt sexual abuse takes place nearly everywhere. Covering it up does not."
This is just silliness. We've just lived through a couple years of the unravelling of cover ups of sexual abuse not of children but of grown women who were themselves high earners and connected to media. If that could be covered up, what could not?
"So this joke offends you as a Catholic?"
"No, it offends me as a comedian."
I get your point Althouse, but if you apply that fully; you'll understand why this academic bribery scandal is not considered a big deal. Sure, such scandal sully the reputation of fine institutions, but if "it directly provokes your adherents to get the hell out", then maybe that's a good thing.
"All feminism is Marxism. There is no feminism that is not Marxist."
Feminism is essentially about rights for women equal to rights for men. At what point in human history would you like to roll back the women's movement for equal rights? Pre- right to vote? Pre-right to own property. Pre-right to not be someone else's property?
An actual R Kelly quote to his female fans at a concert in Oakland:
“You’re gonna be walking bow-legged … Imma make yo back hurt and you gonna need some Aaaadvils”
So he certainly has prior knowledge that his penis is dangerous to the ladies.
For some men, 'balls-deep' is a crime.
I am Laslo.
"Feminism is essentially about rights for women equal to rights for men."
Unfortunately, I think you have the verb "is" in the wrong tense, Meade.
Now feminism is mostly about letting women with cocks compete in female sports.
Transplaining.
I am Laslo.
@Meade
Your wife makes, probably, $150,000 in retirement from a state job and enjoys gold plated benefits.
She is a member of the most important priesthood extant, college professors. People drop million dollar bribes on colleges for the priestly certification of people like Althouse.
You’ve never experienced any of the complaints you listed, nor has your wife.
What do you keep prattling about this shit?
U.S. women are the safest, richest and most powerful group of people in human history and they have been every day or your and my life.
Stop telling these stupid lies. You’re rich. Althouse is rich. Quit bitching about some you have never experienced. Doing so is a lie.
That's cute! Now do public schools. I'm betting far more kids are abused at public schools than by catholic priests.
Now, Meade, I have nothing against your and your wife’s success.
This shit of pretending that you, or Althouse, or U.S. women have some sort of bitch is a vile, stupid lie.
Stop lying.
I don't think the hierarchy can get away with telling the laity to call 911 for the civil authorities. If they want the Catholic Church to survive they are going to have to clean up their act on the inside and in ways that are meaningful to the laity.
Feminism is essentially about rights for women equal to rights for men.
assumes facts not in evidence
"You’re rich. Althouse is rich. Quit bitching about some you have never experienced. "
Predictable that you'd rather obfuscate than answer the question: At what point in human history would you like to roll back women's equal rights?
We know who SNL is going to make fun of and who they cover for. The Church should ignore them. Long after SNL is gone the RCC will remain.
Didn't Jesus say "there are wolves in sheep's clothing." The Church had, and will always have, wolves as members, shepherds and leaders. It doesn't surprise me. If a wolf will cover themselves in sheep's clothing, certainly they will cover each other's abuse of young boys. Disgusting, but not surprising. Hunting down the wolves is tricky business, as you don't want to shoot members of the flock by mistake. I've known a few who got shot in the crossfire.
With all the good Catholics I've met and all the hatred on the left for the Church, Mrs Duffy and I have been visiting the Church. Not sure we'll join, but it would help if they ignored SNL jokes rather than make pointless responses, except when the jokes are funny and worth laughing at.
"Grouping women as a class with a grievance against men is Marxism."
It may be a lot of things but it has no direct connection to Marxism, and this ipse dixit distracts from and undermines the points you are trying to make.
"Stop lying."
I'm telling truth. Why have you enabled the Catholic Hierarchy's coverup?
Hate to say it, but the Catholic Church deserves it.
Whether there are other institutions that deserve it or not, doesn't change the fact that the Catholic Church deserves it. They are not the victim.
Tank is big against the War on Christians and Christmas, but that's not what this is.
Feminism is essentially about rights for women equal to rights for men.
If that was ever the goal it isn't now. Certainly in academia we've overshot that runway and feminism seems to find that's a nice bonus.
@Meade
That’s a deliberately abusive question.
It’s the same as insisting that the economic and political situation of blacks is the same as during slavery.
Answer my question, liar.
Why are you pretending that you and your wife and our generation of women ever faced the problems you’ve listed?
They haven’t. You’re just lying by pretending that they have. You’re lying, Meade.
It’s easy for you to lie like this. You’re a gardener, which is an honorable profession, but it exempted you from being the scapegoat of the quota system. You’re wearing a halo for a sacrifice you didn’t make. White knight syndrome.
I don't understand Catholic priests.
They have all these Catholic schoolgirls around, in those enticing Catholic schoolgirl skirts, but they's rather fuck boys in the ass?
I question such judgment in someone leading the flock.
I am Laslo.
It was also an insult to the Christian Church's music, which puts the last century in the shade.
The feminist gardener is a pretty common figure in Woodstock.
Sainted because he bowed out of the competitive world.
Quick to condemn other men for complaining about being the scapegoat of the quota system.
Volunteering to screw over other men for the admiration of women like Althouse.
True Feminism is about independence for women. How that meshes with traditional marriage relations is the mystery.But maybe that is nobody's else's business. It might have something to do with the power of actual love.
In the meantime, the perils of being Camille Paglia go on. She is a trooper.
Althouse was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Meade.
Quit pretending you live in another reality.
I’m not saying she didn’t deserve her success. She did.
She’s never suffered the indignities you list. No woman you’ve ever known has.
Catholics are absolutely outraged over the continuing sex abuse scandal. Many of the bishops are idiots and some are criminals. In Nebraska a list was released and I knew five of the priests including one who was in charge of us altar boys. A former priest at my high school was just on the front page last month.
But it is only a tiny minority of priests. I’m not rationalizing but rather looking at the big picture. The good the Catholic Church does far outweighs the bad.
The Pope and bishops should have acted years ago and taken a “big bath” on this. Get all the bad stuff out at once, fire the miscreants and write the checks. Goodwill has been seriously damaged by letting this go on.
My view is that I focus on the core beliefs in the Church and not the failings of some humans.
And, yes, anti-Catholic prejudice is the last acceptable prejudice.
The only reason I’m still Catholic is because I went to Jesuit schools.
And for Ann Althouse, I have a reading assignment. “The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything” by James Martin, S.J. Very good book and you will learn plenty. By any objective measure, St. Ignatius Loyola was one of the most consequential persons in history. The company he founded almost 500 years ago is still thriving.
Wouldn't be surprised that public school administrators are better at covering up sexual misconduct than Catholic Church administrators. I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that public school's sexual misconduct far out numbers the Catholic Church's sexual misconduct.
Why can't we have a few chuckles about the Religion of Peace? Our "comics" have zero courage. None.
"She’s never suffered the indignities you list. No woman you’ve ever known has."
You are wrong, Shouty. I knew my great-grandmother very well.
Now, back to the topic: the coverup by the Hierarchy.
This blog post was a sort of Rorschach Test for the commentariat. I am not sure that I recall a post from Althouse that has elicited interpretation and response so different from her apparent intent. The complaint by the diocese was a bit wild considering the life and times of the Catholic Church. Althouse deconstructed it. She didn't denounce Christianity, proclaim a feminist reich, promote positive homosexuality, or even diss Ronald McDonald.
Rules: You can shit all over ordinary Catholics and their faith and you can shit all over Christians.
You cannot say one mean word about the holy and precious Islam.
"And, yes, anti-Catholic prejudice is the last acceptable prejudice. "
Bigotry of any kind is unacceptable and unAmerican.
I imagine most of the kids abused in schools are adolescent girls, which probably does more damage to them and society than with the boys. There's no central authority for the schools, either.
As for the Roman Catholic Clergy, they are caught by living in a society that has laws protecting children from sexual predators, but are at the same time leaders in an institution with explicit rules that having sex with children is never a wrong, but that telling the cult's secret to outsiders is always a wrong.
Which brings us back to Joe Biden.
From what I understand is that there is a “gay Mafia” within the Church and they protected one another. Another problem was the therapeutic culture. Finally, the priest shortage lead bishops to forgive rather than fire the criminals. Stupid.
Althouse said...
And by "victims," you mean the Church? Because that's the only target of the joke."
Actually, the joke was at the expense of the "supporters" of the Catholic Church, comparing them to R Kelly "fans".
AllenS
Exactly. And we read more and more of the sexual abuse of male students by female teachers. People in authority have abused it for centuries.
You must worship left-winger totalitarian proselytizing. Found in spades at the SNL.
We had a case at a public high school near me a few years ago where about a half dozen teachers were charged and convicted of systematically abusing under aged girls. Theses were male and female teachers. The girls were passed around among then, each teacher threatening to expose the girls publicly if they didn't cooperated. It went on for years before it was caught. My guess is that if you don't live near Philadelphia you never heard about it.
The dirty little not-so-secret about abuse in the Catholic Church is that 99% of it is male on male. In other words, homosexual. But the villain is never homosexuals, always the church.
Instapundit does a good job of identifying cases of public school teachers sexual abusing their students. Seems like there are two or three cases a week. But if course, this is not a public school problem.
SNL is a progressive Klan meeting.
Meade
I would roll back feminisn to the week before they wore pussy hats, or the week before they thought up the idea.
I knew my grandmothers too.
My grandfathers were crippled and rendered alcoholic by WWI.
They worked like dogs as tenant farmers.
My family immigrated to the U.S. in the 1890s. Nobody had the vote in my family until then and women gained the vote in 1920.
Let’s get back to the topic of your White Knight lying.
My grandmothers were no worse off than my grandfathers. All of them were dirt poor and struggled for survival.
Feminism is essentially about rights for women equal to rights for men.
Maybe 100 years ago it was. Today women are privileged and men are discriminated against, and feminism is about perpetuating this.
It's all about power.
"But if you support the Catholic Church, isn’t that like the same thing as being an R. Kelly fan? I don’t really see the difference, except for one’s music is significantly better."
The Catholic Church is not the butt of this joke, the Catholic faithful are. That's who the "you" is, who the victims are in the diocese's statement--members of the church, not the church hierarchy.
Protesting an SNL joke is silly, but this analysis has the wrong focus.
Wow the prof goes on a rant. The seething resentment of Christians comes through loud and clear. Don't know the genesis of that hatred.
It's not about Christians, but rather specifically Catholics. That's why Kavanaugh was automatically assumed to be a rapist and Sandmann was automatically the bad guy.
Maybe the next joint reading project should be Fr. Martin’s book.
He used to be on The Daily Show, I think.
The entire leftwing-Klan media industrial media complex felt entitled to trash a Catholic teenager - over an incorrect smile.
"Davidson has not officially responded to the criticism, but he’s been known to take criticism well.
The comedian previously earned some high-profile critics when he mocked Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) (above right) for his appearance, mainly his eyepatch.
The eyepatch covers Crenshaw’s glass eye, which is the result of an injury he received while serving overseas as a Navy SEAL.
In response to the criticism, Crenshaw later appeared on a segment of “SNL” and mocked Davidson’s own appearance."
https://thepoliticalinsider.com/catholic-churchs-brooklyn-diocese-calls-pete-davidsons-anti-faith-joke-disgraceful/?utm_source=conservativedirect&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tpi
The White Knight act, as I said Meade, is typical and expected from the hipster gardener.
It’s also incredibly common in Woodstock for a woman to divorce her husband who’s been commuting 3 hours each way to NYC to support her family, and to take up with the hipster gardener.
Who, of course, has all the correct PC ideas.
Are they asking for more, or less than a quarter billion?
"I would roll back feminisn to the week before they wore pussy hats, or the week before they thought up the idea."
Good answer.
Waiting on the SNL joke or skit lampooning Islam and/or Muslims.
*checking watch*
Looks like it could be a few......centuries. Maybe eons.
"You're the victim."
They are. Victims in the anti-christian culture war.
In that war, homosexuality served as a double-whammy, first to devastate basic morality within the Church, then to be exploited by lefties as the cudgel of "abuse."
Someone here promoted the theory that the recent anti-Catholic rhetoric is base building for Kavannaughing Amy Coney Barrett.
Seems about right.
R. Kelly had tons of great hits. Who hasn’t lost their shit at some point to “Ignition?” But, I’m also a fan of a lot of that somber church music as well. Gregorian chants and all that. A lot of it has a very eerie and other-worldly quality. Apples and oranges, really.
Apparently the Catholic Church is not deserving of charity and cruel neutrality.
"Feminism is essentially about rights for women equal to rights for men."
You mean, like, men and women should have an equal say in whether a baby should be aborted or not?
"Apparently the Catholic Church is not deserving of charity and cruel neutrality."
People are deserving. Institutions are not.
I think it's bully fatigue.
Yes yes - all the problems.
Hey SNL - go mock Islam. I dare you.
Pussies.
Quite the Socratic dialogue this AM.
It’s interesting that nobody ever takes up the outrage over the behavior of gay men that has, to date, caused 37 million deaths worldwide.
Teacher’s pets.
If you think that the Catholic Church has a sexual predator problem, then you must also acknowledge that the Catholic Church has a homosexual problem, because that's who is doing the abusing.
"You mean, like, men and women should have an equal say in whether a baby should be aborted or not?"
Theoretically, yes. In practice, men would need to be able to be pregnant with a baby.
If some bad actors at the top of the Catholic church are bad - everyone is bad.
Just like a kid in a MAGA hat, with a camera shoved in his face and his incorrect smile.
I can't wait for the jokes about Muslim child brides and the Rotterham rape gangs.
“Institutions are not.”
OK. Let’s discuss the abuse of the guaranteed student loan program that provides lavish salaries and perks to college administrators and professors, and dumps tens of thousands of dollars of debt on our kids.
You’re living off the system, Meade.
If you people knew the Society of Jesus like I did, you wouldn’t be so hard on Catholics. And, yes, three of the bad priests on the Nebraska list were Jesuits I knew.
"Apparently the Catholic Church is not deserving of charity and cruel neutrality."
People are deserving. Institutions are not.
Kavanaugh and Sandmann weren't. And if Trump nominates a Catholic to the Supreme Court I bet they won't be either.
Feminists, Catholic church, SNL.
The jokes write themselves.
Yes, allowing openly gay men into the seminaries is what brought this calamity on the Church.
Althouse’s sainted gay men.
Do many people who listen to R Kelly go to church and vice versa?
All I know of him is the criminal girl stuff, but I don't go to church either.
Again, AllenS has it right. And pointing out the obvious is not currently acceptable. Because LGBTQ+.
The priests aren't poking little girls.
Fuck Pete Davidson.
Forgiven, but not forgotten.
"It may be a lot of things but it has no direct connection to Marxism, and this ipse dixit distracts from and undermines the points you are trying to make."
It may not tie directly to Marx, but the subjugation of western women in comparison to the egalitarian paradise enjoyed by Soviet women was one of the arrows in Stalin's quiver of disinformation.
I imagine most of the kids abused in schools are adolescent girls
My gut would have to go with 50/50 or that more abuse is female teacher, male student.
The question is, how many males students would blow the whistle on the cute teacher giving them some after school action verses how many female students would do so - after male teacher called it quits?
And what gets lost in this Catholic crap is what the Church faithful have demanded and what has been done at individual parishes to ptevent further abuse. The cover-up was atrocious. But there are processes and procedures that have been implemented to try to combat any abuse going forward. I know - I worked at a Catholic church. There are background checks and interviews and required on going training to maintain your status to work around or with youth. These things are never the focus - only what did happen. The Church magisteria has much to answer for. But their failure and stain is being used to bludgeon the practicing faithful who are as angry and upset as non-catholics.
Why were the folks at the Catholic Church’s Diocese of Brooklyn watching SNL?
Turn off the crap, man.
Why is everyone down on Meade. The Professor made her plans carefully and she picked Meade. And he has been a winner in every way.
Feminism is essentially about rights for women equal to rights for men.
The word for that is equality.
Feminism must be used because equality is not the goal.
Again - the target by the progressive Klan-cult is always the same. It gets old.
Why not man-up and mock some other group for a change?
How is sexual abuse funny?
Was this an attempt to blur the crimes of R Kelly and magnify the crimes of the Catholic Church - ripe for mocking?
Yes - and as comedy, it's boring, tired, lame, predictable. and yes - offensive.
I was raised as a Catholic, but quit going to church shortly after I left home (1964). Since this Catholic Church homosexual predator priest information started to roll in in little bits until it became an avalanche, I've thought for a long time that removal of the homosexuals from the church priesthood and replacing them with grown men who are married to women would be on the only way to stop this rape of boys, and I still think that, and think that even moreso now.
Theoretically, yes. In practice, men would need to be able to be pregnant with a baby.
Transphobia!!!
I've been told that a man has already gotten pregnant and given birth.
ot: It's raining Biblical here.
The "better music" is the joke.
"Theoretically, yes. In practice, men would need to be able to be pregnant with a baby."
Ah, so the plea for equality starts with the notion that women are special. Got it.
2nd OT: Tucker Carlson kicks it.
I mean really nails the leftwing democratic hack press. Nails.
I say, roll everything back to 1982.
Post-sixties and pre-PC. And I think we women had equal rights by then.
Good times.
I don't agree with the diocese. They should have kept quiet. But I think you go too far in the "us/them" "our/your" direction. I'd have shown a little more detachment and less vilification thinking about a problem that's very big and involves many people, some actively evil, others weak, still others trying to do the right thing. But that's just me.
Media Matters should have it's tax exempt status yanked.
Where is Trump on this?
I went to Saint Rose of Lima Catholic School in Roseville MN for K, 1st and 2nd grade. It was quite obvious that I didn't fit in, and by 3rd grade it was public schools until I graduated from high school. It's up to the Catholic Church to change.
Let's compare and contrast what the Wisconsin Province of the Jesuits did to what the Archdiocese of Omaha didn't do with a sex abuser. In 1989, the Jesuits removed Dan Kenney (my freshman theology teacher and football coach) from Creighton Prep. He couldn't be alone with children. He was eventually stripped of his priesthood. He now lives in Milwaukee in shame.
A sex abusing priest named Daniel Herrick was moved around to different parishes in Omaha when the Bishop knew (or should have known) what this guy was doing. He was convicted and sent to the state pen.
In January, I went to a silent retreat at The Cloisters on the Platte. Joe Ricketts spent between $60m-$100m on this facility. Money he could have spent on a yacht or another home. He said that he wouldn't have remained Catholic if he would not have gone to Creighton. He had talked with a Creighton Jesuit for years about building this.
A friend on the retreat latter told me it was "life changing."
Don't tell me that the Catholic church - and especially the Society of Jesus - is an evil institution.
I suspect the number of abuse claims is way overstated and exaggerated. Why? Because there are almost no cases where priests were murdered or beat to a pulp by the victim's fathers.
The Church is right in principle. The systemic problem exists with the predators and cover-up. The members have taken positive steps to address a minority, albeit monotonic, morally and socially divergent population within its borders.
"I understand the sensitivity of Catholics to the subject, but maybe if they directed more vitriol back to the church instead of attacking those that condemn (or crack jokes) this could have been tackled a century ago."
Don't think we don't. The "tackled a century ago" crack is a bit much.
Because there are almost no cases where priests were murdered or beat to a pulp by the victim's fathers.
Saw this just this morning - "Ex-N.J. priest accused of sex abuse found shot to death in Nevada home"
"The archdiocese said he worked at a number of churches and schools in New Jersey, including Our Lady of Fatima Church in North Bergen; Oratory Prep School in Summit; Holy Trinity in Westfield; and The Church of Saint Theresa in Kenilworth. He was also a temporary chaplain at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood."
Don't they normally shuffle the priests around when they're on the verge of getting busted?
It's no surprise that Shouting Thomas is simultaneously a pedophile enabler and woman hater.
@Howard
You’re quite the idiot.
You prove it here every day.
A malicious idiot, too. As I said, you’re out of your league here.
You’re too stupid to comment here.
Blogger Meade said...
"All feminism is Marxism. There is no feminism that is not Marxist."
Feminism is essentially about rights for women equal to rights for men. At what point in human history would you like to roll back the women's movement for equal rights? Pre- right to vote? Pre-right to own property. Pre-right to not be someone else's property?
3/13/19, 7:00 AM
At what point in human history? How about right now for some 2 billion muslims. If Davidson had made the same joke about Islam he wouldn't get a strong letter, he'd be doing summer stock as the headless horseman.
In fact, Howard you’re so stupid it’s impossible to even get angry at you.
You can’t help yourself.f
Coming from you Allen, that's quite a compliment
No, Howard, coming from Allen, it’s right on.
You’re so fucking stupid that you’ve reversed the meaning of the word cuck.
You’re brain doesn’t work, dummy.
Two rejoinders from Lady boy Thomas. Must have hit a nerve.
It is so, so easy to attack the Catholic Church. Dan Kenney (the sex abuser) was one of my teachers at Prep, but let me tell you about two others: Fr. Tony Wach and Fr. Jim Michelski (dec'd).
Fr. Michelski - all by himself - bought a former YMCA in Omaha's inner city and turned it into a grade school for minority kids. Wildly successful. Life changing. It is called the Jesuit Academy.
Fr. Tony Wach has been in Uganda for years. After the civil war ended, he built a new co-ed grade school and high school. Again, all by himself. I'm sure it is life changing for the Ugandan children that attend it.
Don't tell me the Catholic Church is evil. Both of these schools will change the lives of thousands of children over the years. And for the good.
"But if you support the Catholic Church, isn’t that like the same thing as being an R. Kelly fan? I don’t really see the difference, except for one’s music is significantly better."
The Catholic Church is not the butt of this joke, the Catholic faithful are. That's who the "you" is, who the victims are in the diocese's statement--members of the church, not the church hierarchy.
And it was a defense of R. Kelly's music. That it was ok to listen to the music as long as you acknowledge what was done. Under those rules it's ok to be Catholic as long as you acknowledge the abuse issues.
I just took it as a joke about all the squares that believe in religion, when you could just listen to an R. Kelly album.
No, Howard, your stupidity is incredible dull.
You’re a competitor with Inga and Ritzmo for the blog dunce.
Quite a competition it is, too.
Every statement you have ever made on this blog is full of stupid, malicious venom.
You’ve got serious problems, all of which start with being a dummy.
The "tackled a century ago" crack is a bit much.
I think the Church has been full of gay pedophiles for a long time. The rumors go way back.
It explains the bitterness I noticed among men raised Catholic, why they'd never step foot in a church again but wouldn't talk about it either. Angry at their parent too. Terrible all the way around, because that lack of religion poisons family life thereafter. This has to be the biggest tragedy ever.
I still go to Mass but I look at those guys and think, what about you? And there aren't a lot of kids there anymore.
1492 was a pretty good year all around, from my point of view, cultural quality all in and averaging across European lands. Everything was on the upswing, the Turks notwithstanding.
The Catholic church had its troubles then, of a different sort, but only in parts.
If feminism were rolled back to that prospects for flourishing would be much more hopeful.
Note that the most powerful and historically significant European monarch of the time was a woman. Her husband was a junior partner in that reign.
But I may only be seeing it that way because I like to think I would have been a partisan of the Trastamaras.
Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. Feminism is a chauvinistic ideology. It is a Marxist ideology in that it exploits a real and manufactured class struggle, where the committee is comprised of activist female leaders, women are the workers, men are the oppressors, and selective-child is an ethical practice.
men and women should have an equal say in whether a baby should be aborted or not?
There is at least one case where a judge has ruled that the father has standing to be the voice of his aborted child in a lawsuit against the mother's willful disregard of life and dignity.
Alabama judge allows teen to sue on behalf of aborted fetus
Fetus is a technical term of art used outside of a laboratory by activists to obfuscate the humanity of a human life early in our evolution. Selective-child was a minority problem that progressed to global proportions following normalization with no signs of retraction and repentance forthcoming. Maybe the wicked solution is the only viable remedy for a progressively liberal population. In Stork They Trust.
A hippo's pool this is.
"Don't tell me the Catholic Church is evil. Both of these schools will change the lives of thousands of children over the years. And for the good." It is easy to point to examples in history - and today - of people doing evil because of religion. The interesting thing is that those same people doing the pointing have a hard time acknowledging that some people do good because of religion. Even though logically those two are connected.
And it was a defense of R. Kelly's music.
I don't think so.
Faith (i.e. logical domain), religion (i.e. moral philosophy or behavioral protocol), and traditions are separable. Everyone has a faith, none more than contemporary people prone to conflation of logical domains (e.g. catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, spontaneous conception of human life a.k.a. "viability", speculative statements about origin, statements about reality outside of near-space and time). Everyone has a religious philosophy, or, unfortunately, and progressively, an ethical standard (e.g. Pro-Choice, selective and opportunistic), where the terms and scope are circumstantial. Everyone has traditions.
For the short time that I went to a Catholic Church, all of my teachers were nuns, and if there were any homosexual perverts trying to put their hands on us children, the nuns would have kicked their asses.
Davidson's joke is fine. The Catholic leadership can go pound sand for all I care. You want to stop being the butt of jokes? Take care of your business in the way your Lord and Savior would require you to.
What will get a seminarian expelled faster?
1) Blatant homosexual relationship in the seminary
or
2) Adherence to the Traditional Latin Mass?
Read "Goodbye, Good Men" by Michael Rose for the whole awful story.
They "confess" to the relationships, and the female teachers, usually in their 20s and 30s and more often married than you would suspect..., get charged and plead with probation.
And where are the so called believers in equality when female teachers get probation and male teachers go to prison? If that were reversed, the equality crowd would be all over it with protests and lawsuits. Feminism is about power politics, not equality.
Why isn't liberalism held to the same standard as the RCC? Look at all the high ranking liberal males caught up in the MeToo movement. And what about all the liberal women around those men who knew what was going on, but said nothing? How is that any different than what the RCC did? Notice how that movement seems to have died out? Why? Were all the liberal predators exposed or did the liberals circle the wagons around them to protect heir power base?
The RCC deserves every bit of the riticism and derision it has had heaped upon it. It's actions towards the abusive priests and their victims has been atrocious. But, if you are really concerned about sex abuse and not merely using it to discredit the RCC, then you must also demand a similar look at sex abuse by liberal males. And, where is the outrage over sex abuse by members of Congress. Millions of dollars have been paid out to victims and not one member has been named. Talk about a cover up!
The liberal response will, of course, be to limit the conversation to only their selected target and ignore their own dirty linen.
“I was raised as a Catholic, but quit going to church shortly after I left home (1964). Since this Catholic Church homosexual predator priest information started to roll in in little bits until it became an avalanche, I've thought for a long time that removal of the homosexuals from the church priesthood and replacing them with grown men who are married to women would be on the only way to stop this rape of boys, and I still think that, and think that even moreso now.”
Think about it for a minute. I will suggest that the root problem is clerical celibacy. It is mostly not required throughout most of the rest of Christaindom, and they would argue taught against by Paul, who suggested that bishops and deacons limit themselves to a single wife. One demographic that is not driven to marry and reproduce are homosexual males, many of whom seem to prefer promiscuity over long term commitment. So, probably no one should be surprised that homosexual males are attracted to the RC clergy in excess of their proportion in society. Probably significantly in excess. As Begely pointed out, probably never a large number, but originally protected because of the shortage of priests. And then institutionalized when the protectors managed to infiltrate the Vatican.
One of the problems this brings up is the deep dark secret, the reality, that a number of homosexual males like initiating young adolescent (and hence not really pedophilia) males into homosexuality. Or, alternatively, that adolescents of both sexes are attractive to older males, depending on their sexual orientation, but underage adolescent girls are better protected than boys of the same maturity, probably because we have always protected our females better than our males. Males are expendable, while females are not. Regardless, it does appear that homosexual predatation on adolescents seems more accepted, and probably prevalent, than heterosexual predation, but is studiously keep out of the mainstream press in order to protect homosexuality in general. Anyone voicing this truth, or that homosexual males are statistically more promiscuous than their heterosexual brethren, are ruthlessly suppressed, as a matter of course throughout Western Europe and the US. The interesting thing is that the only way that this reality can be voiced today in our current society is through condemnation of homosexual predation by Catholic clergy, since condemnation of Roman Catholicism is more important to the left than protection of homosexuality.
The LEADERS of the Church condoned, dismissed and even participated in the systematic abuse of children. Jumping to their defense is where a bunch of you want to stand on this one? Ok.
It was a bad joke because it wasn't funny. It wasn't a bad joke because the Church doesn't deserve it. They do. That the church's faithful are the butt of the joke is a valid point. But, I'm not certain they don't deserve it as well. Allegiance to an organization that has done what they have done is not a badge of honor. Can you be faithful to the tenants of Catholicism without being loyal to and even defending an organization as demonstrably corrupt as the Vatican? If not, does that indicate anything concerning about the religion itself?
Did they make mention of Warren Wilhelm's grooving to R. Kelly afar afield from NYC?
Remember that time that Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope on SNL as a protest against the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church? That was almost 30 years ago now.
Anyone who says this has nothing to do with homosexuality is living in a state of denial. 80% of the abuse was against teenage boys.
The old joke is that fashion models are so thin because gay designers want them to look like the 13-year-old boys they want to molest.
And if women priests and married clergy was any solution, the Episcopalian Church would be thriving.
Cool, now do Islam.
heterosexual predation, but is studiously keep out of the mainstream press in order to protect homosexuality in general.
Yes, but this is the situation that no one can talk about.
This book, which explains what happened, has been in print for a decade.
The seminaries were taken over and non-homosexual men were rejected. It became a club.
Cool, now do Islam.
But if you support Islam, isn’t that like the same thing as being an R. Kelly fan? I don’t really see the difference, except for one’s music is significantly better.
It's still not funny. Disclaimer: I don't know anything about R. Kelly.
Catholics and feminists both have a lot of ludicrous ideas, but Catholics are less harmful because their ideas are mostly about or based on things which don't exist.
Blogger Nonapod said...
Remember that time that Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope on SNL as a protest against the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church? That was almost 30 years ago now.
No, that was a protest against the Church's position on women's rights, and specifically abortion.
When I first heard that the Catholic Church was demanding an apology I thought it was satire, something from The Babylon Bee maybe. In this I think the Catholics need to be more like the Mormons who never whine much about anything although certainly having cause to do so now and again.
One thing that might help the Roman Catholic Church out of this problem is that open acceptance of homosexuality is a first world thing it is accepted almost exactly where that Church is in retreat, in its original domain of SW Europe, and later, the US. I don’t think that homosexual priests are what is causing this falling away from the church, but rather are just different manifestations of the same trend towards secularism, and worship of other gods, such as Gaia. Throughout much of where that Church is growing and thriving, homosexuality remains a perversion, and instead of societally accepting clerical predation because it is homosexual, and not heterosexual, it is likely much less tolerated, because it is still seen as perverted. It should be interesting.
"Blogger rhhardin said...
Music went downhill when they got rid of castrati."
So wickedly hilarious it defies comment. Thanks.
if there were any homosexual perverts trying to put their hands on us children, the nuns would have kicked their asses
There were people to warn me not end up alone with Father Starks. Nobody warned me not to end up alone with Principal Warren.
The valorous Meade defends his lady's honor with appropriate gusto. He's a sweetie!
Is Islam next and bartering off very young girls and how rape of non believers is one of the tenets of the "religion'.
James Smith said...No, that was a protest against the Church's position on women's rights, and specifically abortion.
That may have been what most people infered at the time, but she claimed it was about the sexual abuse of children.
In the meantime, Sinead herself said nothing about what she'd done or why she'd done it. (Simply changing one of Marley's lines so that it referred to "sexual abuse" instead of "racial injustice," as Sinead had done in mid-song, hadn't been sufficient explanation and so the press was filled with lurid denunciations of her.)
Peggy Coffey wonders: Is Islam next and bartering off very young girls and how rape of non believers is one of the tenets of the "religion'.
We all know the answer to that one. Only Islam is off limits, partly due to PC and partly due to abject fear. Terrorism does work.
I was raised Catholic. Never heard or saw any sexual abuse. It isn’t as wide spread as it seems. I did watch my very Catholic godfather die of AIDs though.
Meade said...
"At what point in human history would you like to roll back the women's movement for equal rights?"
I am for equal rights. Feminism is not about equal rights.
I think it was here (and correct me if I am wrong) that I read something like: Whenever science finds a difference between men and women, the difference must be advantageous to the women.
Can you point me to where the great minds of feminism argue against this? Please and thank you.
"Can you point me to where the great minds of feminism argue against this? Please and thank you."
Please take my word for it: Ann Althouse argues against that each and every day.
What does a Catholic priest like best about thirtynine year olds?
There's thirty of them.
Off limits to comedy:
The totalitarian leftist religion of peace
The Islamic religion of peace
Early feminism had a point. It's morphed into leftist theology.
See: Why Bill Clinton gets a pass.
Blogger Lyle Smith said...
I was raised Catholic. Never heard or saw any sexual abuse. It isn’t as wide spread as it seems.
Me too although we had a high school teacher, an Irish Christian brother, that was too affectionate, shall we say. We all knew he was queer, the term in those days, but he was harmless.
Most of this began in the 60s. The "Goodbye Good Men" book makes this pretty clear.
Why is feminism a big topic in this thread?
This post is about comedy, demands for apologies, victim bullshit, the abuse of children, and the Catholic Church.
"Apparently the Catholic Church is not deserving of charity and cruel neutrality."
People are deserving. Institutions are not."
Hmmm Davidson is employed by NBC's SNL which is part of the NBC-Universal-Comcast which in turn is part of the Hollywood-Entertainment industry sewer. I prefer to hear sanctimony from people who are free of sanctimony.
The hierarchy is: God, The Church, Spouse, Family, Community, Nation.
Allowing Priests, to prey on children, is without excuse.
I would never allow any person, even suspected of being a predator to be near my child, even in public in a crowd. My father explained to me the difference between God, and church. Church is man made and suffers the entire spectrum of human flaws. This is where the breakdown starts. I have not been raised in a culture of the infallibility of the Pope, and by extension the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Then we get down to the Parish Priest, as my representative of the Infallibility of the institution and its leaders. The chain of command must be more stringent than any Military unit. Don't judge others about things you know nothing of.
St. Paul and St. Peter would have said the same thing about a church that covers up sexual abuse. Somehow the church that claims St. Peter became the church of Ananias, lying to protect its reputation, and the church of Simon, thinking just buying people off was fine. Meanwhile, the church failed the children, which isn't unique to the church, it's just that the Church represents the mission of Christ, and so corrupted the mission and corrupted the very message of healing, hope, and salvation.
Lots of people commit crimes, but police corruption is especially bad because they're the ones who are supposed to stand against crime.
Lots of people are abusive, but abuse from the church is especially bad because they're the ones who say there's a better way. If they don't even believe it, why should anyone? They make it harder for people to hear and harder for people to follow and make their sins the message that gets heard.
Which is to say, that a mediocre joke from a mediocre comedian is the least of the abusers problems. As one guy who knows once said, "It will be terrible for people who cause even one of my little followers to sin. Those people would be better off thrown into the deepest part of the ocean with a heavy stone tied around their necks!"
People have suggested that public schools be next, but shouldn't that be teachers' unions?
Brian said...And it was a defense of R. Kelly's music.
And here I thought it was a defense of church music.
Wow the prof goes on a rant.
She has never stopped being on a rant. And her fanatical anti-Catholic bigotry that has been on display for years is a quite ugly side of her character.
Michael K,
Yeah. I only had a strange feeling once around some visiting young seminarians. I got the feeling they were gay. My memory of Catholicism is positive and good, for the most part. The only thing I ever heard or saw that bothered me was the odd priest who had a hate filled, puritanical bent against some facet of the world.
The Catholic church had its troubles then, of a different sort, but only in parts.
1492 had the election of the Borgia Pope, probably the vilest and most criminal ever.
I mentioned above the interesting intersection between the defense of homosexuality and condemnation of Christianity (and esp Roman Catholicism) by the left these days. But equally interesting is their defense of Islam, while condemning sexual assaults on females, since, as we all know, Islam seems to accept sexual assault, if not rape, as long as the females being assaulted are not closely related (and even that isn’t clear, with that one new Muslim Congresswoman appears to have been married to her brother in order to engage in immigration fraud). Throughout Western Europe, this subject is taboo. In the last several years, entire areas of these countries have effectively become off limits to unescorted females, because of the reality that they will get gang raped, or at least groped, by gangs of Muslim men, if they stray in unescorted. And it seems to almost be treated as a crime to even mention this reality. But then, pederesty is considered normal throughout much of the Muslim world. Interestingly, some groups of Muslims seem to prefer actual homosexual pedophilia to the predation on adolescents practiced by some gay Roman Catholic clergy. But then, drone drivers report fairly common beastiality among the tribesmen in Afghanistan, who apparently don’t quite understand that just because it is dark doesn’t mean that the drone controllers back in the US can’t see what they are doing with their domesticated animals. So, maybe we should add be beastiality to male and female pedophilia, and rape rape to their repertoire. All effectively condoned by the Religion of Peace that we are not allowed to criticize in public because of its intersectionality victimhood points.
Scientists study fruit flies because fruit flies show how brain structure with no sense of humor works.
“Most of this began in the 60s. The "Goodbye Good Men" book makes this pretty clear.”
That was also when homosexuality was essentially mainstreamed. Coincidence?
Thylias Moss ...
I don't believe in [God]. He's just a casual aquaintance,
a comfortable associate with whom I can be myself.
To believe in Him would place Him in the center of the universe,
when He's far more secure in the fringes,
so He doesn't have to look over His shoulder to nab the backstabbers who want promotions,
but are tired of waiting for Him to die and set in motion the natural evolution.
God doesn't want to evolve.
Has been against evolution from its creation.
He doesn't figure many possibilites are open to Him.
I think He's wise to bide His time, even though He pales in the moonlight to just a glow...
just the warmth of hot chocolate spreading through the body like a subcutaneous halo.
But to trust in Him implicitly would be a mistake,
for then He would not have to maintain His worthiness to be God.
Even the thinnest flyweight modicum of doubt gives God the neccesity
to prove He's worthy of the implicit trust I can never give
because I protect Him from corruption,
from the complacency that rises withim Him sometimes,
a shadowy ever-descending brother.
Has there been a long term widespread systematic coverup of child abuse in public schools similar to the coverup in the Catholic Church?
Federal studies indicate that ten percent of students in public schools are subjected to sexual abuse.
Don't confuse an increase in reporting with in increase in the actual crimes.
Sex abuse of girls and boys has been going for pretty much forever.
What started happening in the last two generations was people started reporting it.
This coincided with both the women's movement and the decriminalization of homosexuality.
Some institutions took longer than others to catch up.
When is SNL going to do public schools?
AP uncovers 17,000 reports of sexual assaults at schools across US
Relying on state education records, supplemented by federal crime data, a yearlong investigation by The Associated Press uncovered roughly 17,000 official reports of sex assaults by students over a four-year period, from fall 2011 to spring 2015.
Though that figure represents the most complete tally yet of sexual assaults among the nation’s 50 million K-12 students, it does not fully capture the problem because such attacks are greatly under-reported, some states don’t track them and those that do vary widely in how they classify and catalog sexual violence. A number of academic estimates range sharply higher. . . .
Elementary and secondary schools have no national requirement to track or disclose sexual violence, and they feel tremendous pressure to hide it. Even under varying state laws, acknowledging an incident can trigger liabilities and requirements to act. . . .
Unwanted fondling was the most common form of assault, but about one in five of the students assaulted were raped, sodomized or penetrated with an object, according to AP’s analysis of the federal incident-based crime data.
About 5 percent of the sexual violence involved 5- and 6-year-olds. But the numbers increased significantly between ages 10 and 11 — about the time many students start their middle-school years — and continued rising up until age 14. They then dropped as students progressed through their high school years. . . .
Schools frequently were unwilling or ill-equipped to address the problem, AP found, despite having long been warned by the U.S. Supreme Court that they could be liable for monetary damages. Some administrators and educators even engaged in cover-ups to hide evidence of a possible crime and protect their schools’ image.
“No principal wants their school to be the rape school, to be listed in the newspaper as being investigated. Schools try to bury it. It’s the courageous principal that does the right thing,” said Dr. Bill Howe, a former K-12 teacher who spent 17 years overseeing Connecticut’s state compliance with Title IX, the federal law used to help protect victims of sexual assault in schools.
AllenS said...
I went to Saint Rose of Lima Catholic School in Roseville MN for K, 1st and 2nd grade.
Small world -- that's my parish. The school is still going, but it’s a constant struggle to find students. We have a dynamic young pastor at St. Rose, which gives us hope for the future. But if you want to see a lot of gray hair, come to Mass there some time.
While you're at it Davidson, could you tell us the difference between "rape" and "rape rape"? You could also comment on rape buttons, and the ethics of letting that go on for decades. Then get to the "casting couch."
IOW, there does not exist anyone in Hollywood who's qualified to lecture the rest of us on morality, of any sort.
Meanwhile, in 2004, the Catholic Church in the United States released an extensive report conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York entitled, The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States. In addition, practically every diocese in the country has released the names of clergy who were credibly accused.
Whatever might have been the case in the past, such extensive disclosures does not sound like cover-up.
Wow Professor, get off the fence and tell us how you really feel.
First commenter was right, that’s quite a rant.
I try not to jump into situations/discussions where someone is so virulently entrenched in a position. But I’ll just say two things:
1. While I’d have preferred the church say nothing (because this is the response one expects in this day and age), it certainly appears that the Catholics are the last permissible targets of jokes. As others have said “now do Islam”.... never happen.
2. So many people could be helped by the Catholic faith, yet they deride it (often at their great peril in my opinion). I think it was Bishop Fulton Sheen who famously said “I don’t know anyone who hates the Catholic Church, but I know lots of people who hate why they think the Catholic Church is.”
“Whatever might have been the case in the past, such extensive disclosures does not sound like cover-up”
Unlike the public schools. And the California legislature. Which the media covers for relentlessly.
Mark said...
Whatever might have been the case in the past, such extensive disclosures does not sound like cover-up.
Good point.
I can also add that the Catholic Church has mandatory abuse awareness for all adult leaders.
Has there been a long term widespread systematic coverup of child abuse in public schools similar to the coverup in the Catholic Church?
Do people realize the gross extent of sex abuse in public schools? No. No they don't. Which suggests that there has been quite successful long term widespread systematic coverup of child abuse in public schools.
Or maybe they did/do know. Which suggests that they are part of the problem and guilty themselves of covering up abuse.
Schools failing to protect students from sexual abuse by school personnel, federal report says
The failure of U.S. schools to protect students from sexual abuse by school personnel is a story of district cover-ups, lack of training, incomplete teacher background checks and little guidance from the U.S. Department of Education, according to a new federal report.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said the nation’s K-12 schools lack a systemic approach to preventing and reporting educator sexual abuse of students, despite a problem that the report said affects an estimated 9.6 percent of students – nearly one in 10 – who are subjected to sexual misconduct by teachers, coaches, principals, bus drivers and other personnel during their K-12 career.
Sure, these reports are a few years old. But that's because sex abuse in the public schools does not get reported. It's because it is covered up.
Bruce Hayden @09:11: Well said.
The Catholic Church was seen by millions as a moral authority. It destroyed that authority, not simply by failing to confess its own sins, but by actively hiding them. It should continue its exemplary commitment to works of mercy in society, but restrain from defending itself in the public sphere. There's nothing to gain from it. This is its penance.
The BBC, Penn State, the US Gymnastics Association and many other institutions have all covered up or turned a blind eye to similar offenses. That's what bureaucrats do. Cover for other bureaucrats.......That said, those other institutions were not in the business of preaching morality and redemption. It's not so much the Church's poor record in this regard (although that's a big part of it), but the fact that there is such an aggravating factor of hypocrisy. That's what makes them such an inviting and facile target........I see no reason why a celibate homosexual could not make a good priest, but I see lots of evidence that homosexuals are not the celibate type.
Mr D, I lived on Dellwood St north of County Rd B, and before that on Parker Ave, east of Lexington Ave.
Responding to the SNL joke was pretty bone-headed and counter-productive in my opinion. That being said, it's more even bone-headed and counter-productive to ignore the fact that the vast majority of the abuse was by homosexuals on post pubescent males. The mess and corruption won't get cleaned up unless the situation is recognized for what it is (as politically incorrect as that may be).
Begley presents some persuasive arguments in favor of the Church. The Church will continue to attract good people and will continue to do good work, but this is not one of their better epochs.
Our soldiers in Afghanistan are forbidden to report the many sexual abuses by Muslims of underage boys. And I can't ignore practices by British colonial troops in India and the Middle East to do likewise. Any time we attempt to reform a culture, we soil ourselves in the process.
"Responding to the SNL joke was pretty bone-headed and counter-productive in my opinion."
Big Streisand effect.
I hadn't noticed the joke until I saw the stupid demand for an apology.
And since I'm on a rant today, let me tell you a little bit about my friend the late Fr. John Schlegel, S.J. He put both the University of San Francisco and Creighton University on a sound financial footing. He transformed the entire campus with new buildings.
Perhaps his greatest achievement was the medical school initiative in Arizona. In a few years, Creighton will have the largest medical school in the country on two campuses. How many lives will be saved and suffering alleviated due to Creighton-educated doctors? I don't know many other universities (if any) that have started a new medical school this century.
Don't tell me the Catholic Church is evil.
The greatest benefactor of the U of Washington medical school in the 1950s was the liquor industry,
There was a serious movement to make WA a dry state. The liquor industry headed that off by an initiative that established state liquor stores whose profits all went to the UW medical school.
A few thoughts...
1) I have never found Pete Davidon particularly funny and have not been a regular viewer of SNL for many years. Whatever decent work does occasionally manage to bubble to the surface, I'll watch on YouTube.
2) As a general rule of thumb, I oppose offering apologies to people or groups demanding apologies.
3) I'm not Catholic and have never been Catholic so don't purport to to tell Catholics how they should handle the problem. I suppose that's a question for individual Catholics to consider.
4) As I understand it (could be wrong), one of the main impetuses behind priestly celibacy was to prevent bishops from providing passing their politically powerful offices down to their children. Fukuyama discusses them in his book The Origins of Political Order. Therefore, it's at least worth considering doing away with priestly celibacy and allowing for married priests.
5) Any position that requires lifelong celibacy of men is likely to going to attract a disproportionate number of people with sexual hangups. The issue is not so much with pedophilia (a very distinct sexual pathology) but pederasty and ephebophilia, which involves sexual attraction mainly to post-pubescent adolescents.
6) The area of society, in my estimation, in which the greatest amount of sexual exploitation of teenage males by predatory homosexuals goes on in Hollywood. But this subject is often avoided out of fear of casting homosexuals in a negative light.
I dont see any particular scriptural objection to women un the priesthood but as with the Episcopal church not believing in anything.
Bishop Fulton Sheen who famously said “I don’t know anyone who hates the Catholic Church, but I know lots of people who hate why they think the Catholic Church is.”
A response:
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.”
-the late Cardinal George of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago
Meade said:
""Apparently the Catholic Church is not deserving of charity and cruel neutrality."
People are deserving. Institutions are not."
Davidson treats the Catholic Church and R. Kelly as equivalent entities. I'm not sure if he wants to treat them both as people or as institutions, though.
I don't think the joke is funny. It fails to separate the misdeeds of individuals within an institution with the institution itself, so the analogy doesn't work for me. The Catholic Church doesn't write the music, individuals within the church do.
I'm wondering why Althouse didn't discuss the poor analogy in the joke. Does she think it's a reasonable analogy, or did she just want to focus on the Catholic Church's response, ignoring the bad joke?
I don't think the Catholic Church should have responded, especially with such a poorly written and ambiguous statement. But Althouse misread the sentence:
"It is likely that no other institution has done more than the Catholic Church to combat and prevent sexual abuse."
I think the sentence means sexual abuse external to the Church, not within the church. I read it as indicating the Church's involvement in preventing sex trafficking, people being forced into prostitution, etc that is perpetrated by people outside of the Church. But again, the statement is pretty ambiguous so I could be wrong.
You get your best (darkest, dirtiest) anti-Catholic jokes from serious, believing Catholics.
I'm all for excoriating the Church for the appalling abuse and cover-ups. But doing the job well comedically would require actually caring about the appalling abuse and cover-ups. Fake outrage sourced in liberal/feminist "what I'm really pissed off about is the Catholic Church refusing to go along with abortion/gay marriage/women priests agenda" won't cut it. That shtick is never gonna deliver anything but lame, stale, whiny, and not funny. (Don't know if Laslo has any Cat'lick in his background, but I'm sure he could do the job that SNL can't.)
"The reason SNL's joke hurt so much is that it directly provokes your adherents to get the hell out. I'm sure that is alarming."
Well, that's your wishful interpretation. What "hit the bastards with the truth until they scream" comedy would really require would be "going there" on the big gay mafia aspect of the scandal. Which would hit the wrong bastards (like Pope Hippie, the libs' favorite pointiff). Which means we won't get it from SNL, or with Althouse approval.
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