Catholic meltdown

My point is that the term pedophilia conjures images of 7 year old child molestation.

The EDIT i made was for TipyGypsy and her comment about the age of consent in the Vatican. I called her on her statement for implying that anyone can have sex with a 12 year old there because it is the age of consent, when in reality is is the age of equal consent.


I am not saying that we should be disgusted for non pedophilia sex abuse, but that the term pedophilia shouldn't even be used in the majority of these cases.

 

There is a rampant sensibility in general among the populace that reporting activity to the police is inappropriate, in the largest sense because it doesn't do any good or people do not want to get other people "in trouble". I would point out drug use as a glaring example.

While these things in time are tragic individually, they are a common and enduring aspect of our common humanity. The hysteria around this issue is not so much engendered in these events themselves, but speaks of a history of old scores to be settled. A reaction to the obvious corruptions of the public faith for longer than we can remember. Also, if we do not blame ourselves, we project blame onto others and it is common for societies to develop the moral outrage of current consensus, sort of the distasteful flavor of the month.

 

A 12 year old is not an adult. The age of consent is 12 years old. The Pope has publicly condemned using condoms, which means children having sex could/ will lead to pregnancy.

If the Vatican allows this, everything else isn't surprising.

How you can't see that being wrong is beyond me.

 

My post pointed out that the Pope allows children to have sex. I never implied that meant with someone who is much older. From what I understand that would be 15 years old.

It's crazy how Catholics happily defend this. Would you allow your 12 child to be having sex without protection?

 

1) That age is a mutual same-age consent. It is not legal for even a 13 year old to have sex with a 12 year old.

2) Sex should not be outside of marriage anyways.

3) It seems that this age of consent law is arcane and seemingly cannot be changed for some reason. At least that is what this article implies. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2008/12/vatican_opposes_un_declaration.html

I am not defending the law; I was just pointing out, at least in the context of this thread of clerical sex abuse, that you comment (in my opinion) implied that the Vatican has a low age of consent for all sexual relations when it appears that this is not the case.

Is 16 an adult, is 14 an adult, is 21 even an adult? Who are we also to judge who is mature enough to make this decision. I have met a number of people in my life who I doubt are mature enough for the impact of sexual relations. Contraception removes any sort of responsibility for someone's actions. It makes sex a joke.

 

I guess I just don't want to believe that so many people have no concern for victims. And that's why we have laws requiring the notification of police of serious crimes, for those who otherwise find it "inappropriate".

Decades after the first related crimes took place. Not good.

And you're saying that's a bad thing?

 

I thought the point would be that 12 year olds are able to have sex, but shouldn't use protection. For a country that doesn't agree with sex before marriage, I find it all very strange, But maybe I am the only one.

 

I'll let somebody else comment on that. That level of stupidity frustrates me beyond words.

 

As I said when I posted the link to the BBC page, it almost seems (and I am by no means an expert) that the Vatican is unable to change that law...

 

Thanks! Sorry it's taken awhile to get back to you, but my birthday was last week so my wife and I went to Las Vegas to celebrate. Regarding the above quote, with all due respect, this indicates you're relatively new to Catholicism, at least as a practitioner. Personally, I did the whole Catholic thing for several decades. Going through my upbringing in the Catholic church, I firmly believe a lot of the practices I was subjected to scarred me in a way that took me years to recover. That's not to say that adults can't be scarred, but some of the teachings of the Catholic Church can be flat-out frightening, especially to a kid growing up in the 1960's before the church did anything to try to become more "user-friendly" (not that I think they're at that point yet).

For example, we were raised to fear God and fear Jesus. It was the Holy Spirit that was the compassionate one of the Trinity. God was there to judge you. Anything less than perfection was cause for going to Confession and asking for forgiveness. Any unforgiven sins were cause for Eternal damnation, and there was no quota on how many unforgiven "woulda, coulda's" you could get away with before you'd literally be cast into the blast furnace of Hell forever. Those images are scarring to kids, and the church took great pride in preaching this philosophy.

Then there were the stories. For example, respect your rosary. We were told if we swung our rosaries they'd turn into snakes. You may laugh, but we were taught fear by priests, nuns, and brothers - those who were seemingly infallible in the eyes of God. I'm guessing you went through the Baltimore Catechism. It was quite intimidating to be a 7 year-old and forced to memorize and recite that church doctrine in front of your class with an intimidating priest breathing down your neck, asking random questions, snapping his fingers, and chastising you if you got any of the EXACT verbiage incorrect. Paraphrasing was not allowed!

It continued beyond that. I went to Catholic schools, and around 5th or 6th grade they started segregating the boys from the girls on the playground. There was an actual boundary on the playground, and if we crossed over, it was cause for detention. Most of the non-religious faculty in the elementary schools didn't seem qualified to be teaching. I remember going to school realizing I wasn't going to learn anything that day. Rather, school was more of a day care for adolescents and near-adolescents.

High school was socially scarring. The education I received was superb, but it was a social disaster. There were separate Catholic high schools for boys and girls. What that meant was that we went through our socially formative years in complete isolation of the opposite sex. There were occasional mixers or whatever, but those were isolated, once-every-few-weeks activities. For a then-shy person such as myself, I was scared shitless. It wasn't until years later that I realized the girls weren't throwing themselves at me so I "swallowed my balls" and forced myself to interact - making a complete ass of myself, but determined to overcome my handicap. I eventually succeeded, but it would have been much easier had I had day-to-day exposure to girls during those formative years. I remember one of our high school teachers encouraging us to go to our senior prom, stating that it may not be important to us at the moment but would be a fond memory as we grew older. My buddies and I talked to each other - none of us knew any girls even if we wanted to go!

Past that age, I began a long, slow road to recovery. I'm sure you've heard the term "Recovering Catholic," well that applied to me. I've got a bit more on the topic further down regarding the church's view on sex.

This is an example of the Catholic Church trying to take on a kinder and gentler face. During my childhood it would have been blasphemy to portray Jesus as anything but the stern-faced Son of God who spent 24 hours a day preaching. Thoughts to the contrary were cause for a trip to Confession. That image is still chiseled in my mind.

Personally, I don't think a priest is in the best position to provide marital counseling. We did go for professional counseling from a psychologist, actually two different ones on two different occasions. Both were female, which was important as my ex would have considered anything from a male to have been sexist. The first one took a softer, gentler approach with my ex. Not that there's anything wrong with that approach, but my ex was a stubborn woman who refused to try anything the therapist suggested. The second therapist was more confrontive. She charged head-on into my ex. It was fun to watch because the therapist was saying all the things I wanted to say, but it would have been suicide had the same words come out of my mouth. That's not to say I'm weak and soft-spoken, rather there was a level of unfairness about my ex that I couldn't surmount. She didn't want the marriage to work. You question that? I was her third husband! Why did I marry her her to begin with? She had great excuses for what happened with the first two, and I was in "LUV." :rofl:

I said "fuck it." The only reason I asked about an annulment was because I knew it would be important to my parents. Once I heard the comments about trying to save my first marriage, I was through.

This continues the hurtful preachings of the church. I was raised with this philosophy and it was yet another thing that was scarring. We were taught that sex was a beautiful, caring expression of love given to us as a gift from God to be practiced only my those bound by marriage. Imagine the guilt running through my mind the first time I was standing there horny as hell with a girl's naked pussy staring me in the face. Okay, you could argue that I would have felt differently had I been married, but that's not true either. After hearing all the judgmental teachings of the church, I was still feeling guilty having sex with my wife. We weren't taught that sex could be a pleasurable experience between a man and a woman, rather we were told that sex was solely for procreation - any act of sex using any form of birth control was a sin. Who can afford to have 6-8 kids these days?

It was interesting when I went through pre-Cana (premarital counseling required before marriage in the Catholic Church). We did it over a weekend at a retreat center (boys and girls in separate rooms, thank you). They put off the discussion of birth control until late one night. All the couples were together for the discussion – what I heard was shocking! The couples who were out of school and working professionals were adamant that they were using birth control no matter what. They realized the financial commitment to properly raise children. The younger, idealistic couples, still in school, bought into the whole rhythm method, “we’ll let God decide our fate” approach. I just can’t believe people buy into that shit in this day and age. Who can afford it? Regarding the whole sex thing, it took years for me to get over the guilt associated with sex. These days I can bang my wife hard, hot, and heavy and shoot sperm everywhere - and still love and care for her. It took a lot of time to get to that point.

By the way, here's a story that just appeared in the past week.

http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=136991

 

A thought that just came to me:

How many jobs could you have where you could admit to having sex with minors on the job and still be employed? I can't think of any, besides priest.

 

What?? I didn't get the e-mail on this!

 

Blasphemy, it is.

 

Bill Maher joke:

The Pope finally got around to meeting this week with a group of victims of sexual abuse by priests. After the meeting, the group said that they were touched.

 

i personaly dont think that the catholic church will be around much longer,
but its ok we can live just fine with fewer sexual predators running around us
hasnt this ummmmm church caused enough harm for one lifetime? this church system has cause more violence and bloodshed across the eons?! i am all for freedom of religon and all that kind of bs but when the church is the problem its time for it to go away!!