It will be uncomfortable but it needs to happen. Both defense of the church needs to avoided, and anti-religious agenda. The victims here are the real important people to defend. We should not be making rhetorical points off their suffering.
Good, we are sick of what they have done to His church.
Are you still a member of the Catholic Church? Why?
Catholics believe that the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of truth and the valid sacraments. Our believes are not anchored to the charisma or personality of our leaders.
If a mother found her child covered in feces does she throw him away? We can not switch churches.
Sorry but that is a disguising cop out. Do you continue to contribute money to this corrupt institution? Do you continue to adhere to Catholic Church rules? Why won’t you just quit the institution of the Catholic Church and just be a good Catholic/Christian? For example, you can continue going to mass weekly and receiving all the sacraments but not give a dime to this corrupt institution. And you can live according to what you actually believe in unencumbered by Catholic Church dogma.
Wow @Patrick I am impressed. You are wisely not arguing he leave his faith.
The challenge for a lot of us is that we experienced something real in flawed institutions. It is very hard to know when to leave. For me, it took courage, but I’m not sure what the right answers are sometimes, except this:
Thank you for following dictum.
Going to mass weekly and receiving all the sacraments without giving a dime to the Catholic Church is a perfectly valid thing for Catholics to do.
If a Catholic does not want to give collection for fear of their money being misused, here are their options:
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If one wants to contribute money to the Church but are afraid that the money is going to be misused, one can give only to the second collections, and only on those whose goals your share and can verify that your money are going to the places that you want them. One can also donate directly to different organizations and institutions within the Church that does not answer directly to the Vatican.
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If one does not want to tangle with the Vatican at all, there are 23 Catholic Churches that are not Roman Catholic Churches. They do not answer to Rome but still possess the fullness of truth and the sacraments.
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One can, as you say, just not give any money. That’s perfectly fine.
Nevertheless, if you abide by the Catholic beliefs (your axioms), then leaving the Church because of the sex scandals is an incoherent position.
Does sitting in the Pews and NOT demanding changes to the very institution that allowed this to occur for over 70 years and to allow it to be covered up at the highest level in the institution makes one complissed ?
What are you going to do? Just express your outrage and shrug your shoulders?
I do a combination of 1 and 3. I want to do something extra, but at the moment I am not sure what yet.
Regardless of what I do or have to do, to someone of my axioms, leaving the Church because of this scandal is an incoherent position.
How does leaving the Catholic Church solve anything? If all the outraged people just leave and ignore the Catholic Church, then all that remain are those who cannot or will not end the abuse, plus the abusers, which is an even worse situation.
Perhaps you can dismantle the Catholic Church entirely, but is that a better situation? The amount of abuse that occurs in secular society is even greater, and is condoned. At the very least in the Catholic Church everyone knows it is wrong.
In general, unless the Catholic Church is somehow the antichrist, then it makes little sense to leave it, nor does it make sense for Christians to not join, or for any other theist, humanist, or any other person with a bent towards the good, true and beautiful not to join. It is the most consistent, rational and effective organizing force for the good in the world that I know of.
Why must the institution of the Roman Catholic Church exist at all? I am talking about the bureaucracy and the institution itself made up of the priests, bishops, and pope. Dismantle that. Leave the practicing Catholics laypeople running the local groups without the very institution that is corrupt. If the Roman Catholic Church was a corporation or even a government, it would have been reformed many decades (centuries) ago. Why does practicing Catholics need to stay in such a corrupt institution?
Are you talking about the Roman Catholic Church as the most consistent, rational and effective organizing force for good in the world?
They sorely need to make a clean break with the past, but it’s just too much for them to face up to. They’re dooming themselves to a slow death by a thousand local investigations. The corpse will drag on of course, and renew itself with time. The lost moral authority won’t so easily be reclaimed, and given what it has led to much for the better one would have to say. One would hope for humility in the future and the ability to subordinate itself to the moral realities of society at large. Probably it’s a given. People won’t be shamed into silence about sexual abuse anymore, in many cases. What was swept under the rug in the past for some imagined larger good, can’t be these days. Things are really changing.
As long as one can ensure the fullness of truth and validity of sacraments to be present in these local churches (which includes apostolic succession and uniformity of faith and doctrine) Catholics do not have any oppositions against locally organized churches. Indeed, this is the case for the 23 non-Roman Catholic churches.
The core Catholic belief is the Eucharist, that Christ is literally becomes the bread and wine we drink. The further belief is that this transformation happens when only the priest performs the confectionary rite, because it is only the priest that is given this authority. Finally, the priest gets his authority through apostolic succession which is passed down from the pope, and the pope in turn is passed this authority from his predecessor, which we claim comes directly from Jesus through Peter the first pope.
So, it makes no sense to talk of Catholicism without the Catholic Church, unless we are supposed to reject core Catholic doctrine. But in that case we are Catholics in name only.
Yes. I used to not believe this, but that was due to enlightenment propaganda. If we take a step back from our enlightenment value scheme, it is pretty clear, even today in the midst of things like the priest abuse scandal. The most glaring example to me is the Catholic Church’s firm pro-life stance. The right to life is the most fundamental right we can have, and the Catholic Church is the only institution of its size and global influence that is 100% pro-life from conception.
From a more humanitarian perspective, the Catholic Church is the largest non state provider of healthcare around the world.
From an intellectual perspective, it provides the most rigorous, consistent, philosophically and scientifically sound worldview I know of, which has been carefully and continuously built up since the earliest days of the church. There have been no major corrections that I know of, even Vatican II, which many claim was a major break with the past.
Finally, it is the only religion I know of that both makes regular claims of supernatural intervention in the world in present day and scrutinizes its supernatural claims, like miracles, apparitions and sainthood, with scientific rigor from a board that includes non-Catholic skeptics.
Are you catholic @EricMH? That might explain a lot, especially if you are of the Thomist variety.
I don’t think this is entirely correct. The apostolic succession refers to the line of bishops stretching back to the apostles. The priests do not get their authority from the pope, but from the bishops. This is how there are valid sacraments in the Orthodox Churches.
I’m not sure either apostolic authority works this way or that even with these rules succession was maintained in the Catholic Church. Looks like it is more about a tradition built up to maintain power.
Though I’m really glad there are other church options for well meaning Catholics.
Careful we don’t make this about defending the Catholic Church though.