Foreal. How can you still look to religion for morality?
One of the mind-numbingly obtuse arguments used by religious people to validate their beliefs is that they depend on their religion for moral guidelines. Because, as everyone knows, there is nowhere else to look for rules about how to treat your fellow man. So, as the mouth of God on Earth, the Pope would have to be the model of morality, right?
I was talking to some friends today and they weren’t aware of the spread of the Catholic priest “incidents” into Ireland and now Germany. The NPR podcast below gives some of the finer points. As it turns out, the Pope was probably involved when he was a priest in Munich! I really don’t understand how the Catholic church intends to come back from this incident without some kind of dramatic pruning of every level of the clergy, including the Pope.
Please listen to this podcast. It really reveals the Catholic church for what it really is: an dirty old man club to end all dirty old man clubs.
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Stories:
- More Abuse Allegations Anger Germany’s Catholics
- Scandal-Hit Catholic Church Still Integral To Irish
- Vatican Rejects Pope Role In Sex Abuse Cover-Up
- Is The Bible More Violent Than The Quran?
On the other hand, is priest/boy love such a bad thing? Where is the North American Priest/Boy Love Association?
2 Comments
Jeff – How can the actions of some priests within one religious organisation invalidate all religions and any belief in God? Isn’t that as mind-numbing as arguing that “we need morality. Morality rests on belief in God. Therefore God exists”? This scandal (or run of scandals) about the Catholic church certainly raises a variety of questions, but it is a bit flippant to see it as undermining all religions everywhere. Indeed, I don’t think it means that every decent person who was a Roman Catholic should instantly join or found a new church.
Paul – you are right – I was kind of infuriated by the deluge of sexual abuse stories I was hearing and reading and made some bad generalizations. As much as I do think that most organized religion is harmful to society, I do acknowledge that the horrors inflicted upon children all over the world by the Roman Catholic church don’t necessarily say anything about religion in general. It’s more nuanced than that. It’s clear that there are certain beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church that lead to the ubiquity of these abuses. And some of these beliefs and practices are shared by other major religions. I think the moral infallibility is one of these things. If it was any other organization that had proven to churn out child rapists, would they still be running 90%+ of the schools in Ireland? Religion enjoys a special status in most cultures that prevents people from questioning it, which allowed these abuses to go on for much longer than they would have if the church wasn’t considered morally infallible and above reproach.