The Pope is coming! The Pope is coming!

[Mark5]

I would like to know why the Catholic church is being held responsible when it is individuals that were actually responsible. Why are these people not being found and identified and prosecuted for these alleged crimes against humanity? Some of them must still be alive and if not, we should still know who they were. It is like they do not exist. How was the Catholic church, based in Rome, supposed to know about all of this back then? They are not organized like the military. With the Nuremberg trials, individuals were identified, tried and executed. When teachers are caught abusing their students, is the school board held responsible or is it the individual who actually committed the act? Does the Pope know who these people are? Was the pope in the day aware? I guess if they get an apology from the Pope then that opens the door for lawsuits and monetary awards. We should know who these individuals are before any more actions are taken.

Within any organization the culture of the organization determines the likelihood of good and bad things happening. Yes, there will always be rogue behavior within any organization - but how an organization deals with it has a lot to do with continuance of bad behavior and its prevalence.

Each organization, whether secular or religious bears responsibility for the prevalence of bad behavior within its ranks. Within that is the reality that if "A" does something bad, and "B", "C", and "D" who are tempted but do not actually participate see that "A" is not punished/banished from the organization - then "B", "C" and "D" are encouraged to join in bad behavior because there are no consequences. Even worse are organizations where the bad deeds of "A" are overlooked and "A" is promoted (sometimes that is because a more senior member of the organization wants someone they can manipulate because they "have something on them"). When an organization does not promptly punish rogue behavior, a rot sets in. Good people become demotivated and leave. That reinforces bad behavior as the peer group has fewer and fewer good folks to provide upward peer pressure. The organization becomes populated with the apathetic and perpetrators of rogue behavior and becomes a rotting corpse of what it should be.

It happens in business. It happens in any organization, even in the military (just consider the sexual abuse scandals in Canada's military).

The organization of the Catholic church, and some organized religions, were and still are guilty of allowing such bad behaviors to fester and grow within their ranks. As has been said many times "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". Worse yet, the Catholic church organization betrayed its own espoused ethos and covered up for and protected the perpetrators of evil - and promoted them.

This is not a new problem for the Catholic church (the oldest of the "Christian" religious organizations). In fact some would say it started with their "deal with devil" in becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire. From that time when Constantine made Christianity the "state religion", the Roman Catholic church became an instrument of power and instruments of power are especially prone to attracting the wrong sorts of people. Even more so when wealth flows to such state religions.

There is a long history of systematic bad behaviors within the organizational ranks of the churches who were instruments of power. This is not unique to Christianity - and is to be found wherever one finds "state" religions. In fact, those systematic abuses by state religions are part of the impetus for the rise of secular democratic government in the first place - and why "the separation of church and state" remains so important to the maintenance of democrac

It is important to distinguish between the religion itself and the organizational power structure of organized religions. In the case of Catholic church, the organizational structure and the people within that are where the problem lies. They (not all, but enough) have betrayed the ethos of their own religion and those who find that the Christian path is the one for them.

I would still like to know who these nameless and faceless people are or were,who seem to be hiding in the shadows. All these accusations are meaningless without the true perpetrators being identified. To just blame the Catholic church lets these people off scott free. The Catholic church may have been unaware of these things going on too . A lot of this happened before the communications and over sight that we have today. Once again, we are unfairly judging things based on today's standards. Also, the people involved may have another side to the story. Everyone who is accused of a crime has a right to face their accusers. Why are the police not involved if this is such a horrific crime?
The Spanish went to Central America centuries ago and changed everything, including the language. Are they being asked for compensation and asked to apologize? I would be interested in knowing that.

[hobbyguy]

Mark, if you are interested in how the church organizations controlled, covered up and manipulated things to protect some very shady characters, there are dozens of stories.

If you are really interested, I suggest a good starting point is the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse. It is 808 pages detailing how it all went down. Free download PDF.

[The Green Barbarian]

*removed*

[foenix]

*removed*

[Staredintoabyss]

Nails it to the wall.
Solving problems doesn't allow infinite funding for the social grifters milking and poisoning society.

[the truth]

the church still at it in 2021 people https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/3 ... 009#351445

[bob vernon]

Whether it's an organized international syndicate, like the Catholic church, or a local free-enterprise church, using the fear of a man up in the sky or in another dimension who is watching you to cash in, it's all wrong. We should move beyond this. It is just manipulation of the masses for the greed of a few.

The Government of Canada recently declined to appeal a judgement that the Catholic church was not liable for any amount larger than the $79 million they agreed to. This was days before the Pope announced that he was coming. So when he comes here, he won't have to put up any more money from the church. All he'll have to do is express thoughts and prayers and sorrow. How convenient.

[blueliner]

Whether it's an organized international syndicate, like the Catholic church, or a local free-enterprise church, using the fear of a man up in the sky or in another dimension who is watching you to cash in, it's all wrong. We should move beyond this. It is just manipulation of the masses for the greed of a few.

The Government of Canada recently declined to appeal a judgement that the Catholic church was not liable for any amount larger than the $79 million they agreed to. This was days before the Pope announced that he was coming. So when he comes here, he won't have to put up any more money from the church. All he'll have to do is express thoughts and prayers and sorrow. How convenient.

Wonder if our current born again Muslin minority PM will greet the Pope and kiss his hand and feet ??

[Babba_not_Gump]

Whether it's an organized international syndicate, like the Catholic church, or a local free-enterprise church, using the fear of a man up in the sky or in another dimension who is watching you to cash in, it's all wrong. We should move beyond this. It is just manipulation of the masses for the greed of a few.

The Government of Canada recently declined to appeal a judgement that the Catholic church was not liable for any amount larger than the $79 million they agreed to. This was days before the Pope announced that he was coming. So when he comes here, he won't have to put up any more money from the church. All he'll have to do is express thoughts and prayers and sorrow. How convenient.

Wonder if our current born again Muslin minority PM will greet the Pope and kiss his hand and feet ??

A photo-op with the pope! Heck, it'll be selfie time.
I wonder if anyone thinks that would be disrespectful?

[bob vernon]

On again, off again. The ultimate reason that a meeting with the Pope is off again is very fundamental to the legal arguments with the Catholic organization. If the Pope apologizes or says that the church is sorry, it implies that the church did something wrong that it is apologizing for.

And an apology could eventually have an effect on settlements, despite the fact that the Canadian government capped monetary settlements with the church at $79 million by failing to appeal a court decision. A new apology could open the door to restart the legal case.

So the Pope only wants to offer sorrow and thoughts and prayers and NOT an apology which might lead to having to compensate Catholic residential school survivors. And, of course, the longer he can stall, the number of these survivors will decrease as they pass away.

https://www.castanet.net/news/Canada/35 ... onal-chief

[bornhere63]

The Pope owes nothing for a previous administration, and certainly nothing for fulfilling government contracts.

One of the Truth and Reconciliation prompts is for the Catholic church to fund deprogramming. The church will never violate its gospel mandate, and this request will divide people within FN, as some are devoted to their Christian faith choice. We saw the start of problems with that when churches on FN land burned last summer. I wonder if the lofty, very tiny, unelected group of people who wrote T and R considered the pain they would introduce to their own community?

Regarding the graves. These are not a surprise. They were on record and finding them is part of T and R. Could these markers have been wooden, like so many markers all over Canada, and have decayed? Instead of being appalled that people died, we should be celebrating their return to their homes. These are not the mass graves of genocide, and we need to stop sensationalizing.

[1092]

.002% of indigenous kids died in residental homes in over a hundred years, and both religions were responsible. Out of 160,000 kids in homes, 4,000 died and this was mostly when there was no resistance to disease. There are more indiginous kids in care homes now, than ever there was.