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Anaxagoras -> RE: Is the Catholic Church a force for Good ? (8/1/2011 8:04:57 AM)
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ORIGINAL: RapierFugue
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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
The actions of the church are a complex issue relating to a clash between their traditional morality and reality. I feel that dragging their feet on the need for condoms in Africa is inexcusable however due to the massive loss of life due to AIDS. One of the things I could say in Ratzinger's defence though, is that he was a liberal until the effects of 1968, and he was the first of the senior Catholic hierarchy to make a serious move on the paedophile issue and the first Pope to unambiguously apologise for the actions of the church.
He (while still a cardinal) wrote a letter to senior church members in several areas, threatening that anyone cooperating with the police investigations into child abuse allegations would be excommunicated. This one act alone should forever damn him. Oh, and that was after he claimed to be "helping authorities to root out wrongdoing within the church".
Although I grant you it was a "serious move" ... just not one with any good outcome.
It is a fact that Ratzinger did more than any other high-level member of the church to deal with the issue of child sex abuse. He can still be criticised of course but again you seem unable to view this issue in anything other than black: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#Response
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Prior to 2001, the primary responsibility for investigating allegations of sexual abuse and disciplining perpetrators rested with the individual dioceses. In 2001, Ratzinger convinced John Paul II to put the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in charge of all investigations and policies surrounding sexual abuse in order to combat such abuse more efficiently.[126][127] According to John L. Allen, Jr., Ratzinger in the following years "acquired a familiarity with the contours of the problem that virtually no other figure in the Catholic church can claim" and "driven by that encounter with what he would later refer to as 'filth' in the church, Ratzinger seems to have undergone something of a 'conversion experience' throughout 2003–04. From that point forward, he and his staff seemed driven by a convert's zeal to clean up the mess".[128] In his role as Head of the CFD, he "led important changes made in church law: the inclusion in canon law of internet offences against children, the extension of child abuse offences to include the sexual abuse of all under 18, the case by case waiving of the statute of limitation and the establishment of a fast-track dismissal from the clerical state for offenders."[129] As the Head of the CDF, Ratzinger developed a reputation for handling these cases. According to Charles J. Scicluna, a former prosecutor handling sexual abuse cases, "Cardinal Ratzinger displayed great wisdom and firmness in handling those cases, also demonstrating great courage in facing some of the most difficult and thorny cases, sine acceptione personarum (without exceptions)".[128][130]
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However, focussing on just one individual at the head of the Catholic church is, I feel, rather letting the church off the hook; it is fundamentally corrupt from top to bottom (money from poor nations is siphoned off to fund the lavish headquarters of the religion, which needs no further aggrandisement), morally bankrupt (total apathy in resistance to Nazism, as well turning over Jews to the Nazis and assisting in the seizing of Jewish assets during WWII,
Not at all, the Pope is the head of the church, by far the most powerful figure in the Church at any given time. Pius the Twelfth did not nearly do enough during the Holocaust. He seemed to be more worried about communists than Nazi's which was an old Catholic obsession. However, he did not turn Jews over to the Nazi's either, in fact a huge number of Jews were hidden from the Nazi's, and issued a statement in 1941 condemning the persecution of Jews. Many evil priests did assist the Nazi's and were even involved in the mass genocide of the Serbs in Croatia. It is also seen that the Church unofficially helped war criminals get out of Europe so I don't wish to give a positive apprasial but once again it isn't really balck and white. The Church did save a lot of Jews and even people like Golda Meir spoke positively about what Pius had done.
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while almost certainly taking a cut of the proceeds) and, moreover, has assisted in the covering-up of the systematic abuse of children (read the Irish Government's report into the atrocities there - I have, and it will break your heart) and killed untold tens of thousands, possibly millions over time, in its stance against condoms to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa. Oh yes, and one could easily argue the Catholic church’s definition of women as almost second class citizens leads to what could be considered an almost slave-style definition of their worth, but let’s not worry about minor details like that.
No offense but I think you need to realise that just because a person disagrees with criticism of one aspect or area of a vast institution against criticism, it does not mean they support the whole. If you look back at this thread briefly you will see I gave out about the way in which the church dealt with child sex abuse and the AIDS issue in Africa.
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