Churches found to have been abusing children entrusted to them in Germany

[NovaKart]

I do believe it was likely a pattern of abuse but I wouldn't be surprised if some people decided to take advantage of the situation.

 

[Yeekim]

Obviously child abuse victims are money "whores"

And my Dad used to beat all ´undred and fifty of us with a broken bottle - if we were lucky!

 

[ParkCungHee]

Religion of Peace indeed

"It's all behind us" Indeed.

 

[sendos]

maybe we should see exactly how they define said terms.

Well, by terms I'm referring to the 7 sins. The Church uses these sins to verify what they support or not, yet the Church has violated almost all of them:

Greed (such as the indulgences--that is, paying the church to guarantee you'll go to heaven. This was one reason why Martin Luther revolted against the church.)*
Lust (sexual abuses like the OP mentioned), along with envy (longing for sex due to celibacy).
Wrath (the crusades against Islam and paganism) *
Lies (covering up the abuses)
Pride (proud of their influence on the world and thinking that they're the most moral organisation in the world.)

* The catholic church has changed its ways, at least I think they have.

The point is that when there are non-catholic church paedophiles committing such crimes, they are amoral, because they don't have standards and they are punished accordingly. However, when there are paedophiles in the catholic church committing such crimes, they are immoral, because they are using double-standards as I've mentioned above and are not always punished.

The Catholic Church doesn't claim its members are perfect

Yes, but when they define God as perfect, you'd think they'd be perfect as well, or at least deal with those clergymen who are violating their standards and tarnishing their reputation? The Vatican prefers to protect those offenders instead of exposing them! The Vatican has incredible influence over the world and they have immunity to being charged with any crime. They're an organisation, not a country, but this is not the case as I see it.

What I wish is that the Vatican:
- admits to the sexual abuse scandals and compensates the victims. This has barely happened. An apology isn't enough without some form of action taken.
- Stops telling people what to do according to the 7 sins.
- Starts supporting science and logic for once. This is slowly happening, as the Catholic Church supports condoms finally.

My closing statement is that the Catholic Church deserves to be blamed for these scandals because of their law of celibacy and failure to deal with the offenders properly. How can uphold their standards if they can't even honour it?

 

[Snorrius]

As I'm in an anti-church rant mode lately, here's one piece of news which discusses how the Catholic Church, along with protestant ones, abused tens of thousands of children in West Germany during the 1950s, 60s and 70s:

I am not sure is the Church is (only) to blame. It the article's cases parents voluntarily informed local authorities and it seems to be a common practice of the time supported by community.

It should be said that the practice itself indeed is out-dated by modern European standards.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Religion of Peace indeed

Hang thy neighbor as thou wouldst hang thyself amirite?

 

[ori]

/sigh

this is not a problem of any church - these foster homes were run by both the state and the various churches - with ~2/3 of homes run by religious institutions and all supervised by the repective state authorities. The cases stem from all these institutions and reflect more on the policy towards foster children in general during that time than on any particular institution.

Laws during the 50s and 60s regarding the treatment of children in general and in foster homes specifically were extremely lenient with respect to corporal punishment and forced labor and there were an unknown but supposedly large number of cases in which even those laws were broken. As for other forms of abuse: sexual abuse is alledged in many cases, though the exact number is unknown and only some hundreds of people have so far come forward to claim abuse of any kind (be it sexual in nature or otherwise), so its hard to gauge.

Bottomline: thread title is misleading: The abuse was alledgedly widespread (though they use today's views on what constitutes abuse to judge policy 50 years ago) and it was found to be done in both state run and church run homes.

 

[civ_king]

sendos, that isn't relevant, my response is in the Ask a Catholic Thread
This seems the prevailing attitude in Germany at the time not just some crazy Catholic thing


ugh, I accidentally deleted it

 

[Arakhor]

The Vatican City is certainly a sovereign state. It's the church itself that's "only" an organisation.

 

[NovaKart]

That reminds me of the movie, Das Weisse Band. A really messed up generation there.