Over
the last several years, the Roman Catholic Church has found itself
confronted with a wide variety of scandal --- some of them have been
described even by Catholics as horrors --- that involve sex and what
Catholics describe as sins of one sort or another. First came the
discoveries in Ireland of the Catholic orphanages/homes-for-unwed
mothers and, at some of them, the widespread practice of forcibly
taking babies away from their mothers in the homes and putting them up
for adoption. This practice was denounced by the Pope himself. But of course, it occurred in the past. Occurring in the past, too, was the apparent practice of killing babies and dumping them in unmarked graves (one was a septic tank) along with fetuses aborted in the homes.
The current scandal revolves around the report of a grand jury in Pennsylvania of widespread sexual abuse by
Catholic clergy, over a period of many years. The scandal here concerns
the sexual assaults themselves, discovered on a scale not previously
known of, and the cover-ups. The general public has recently learned of the latter on a broadening scale since the original reporting by The Boston Globe some years ago, which was made into a movie ("Spotlight"). Additionally, charges have been made against the Pope himself of covering-up reports of sexual abuse by a cardinal. There are also charges of the broad toleration of
homosexuality within the Church, which may well be wide-spread.
Interestingly enough, the latter charges are being used against a Pope intent on reforming the Church on a grand scale in how it deals with economic, political and social issues around the world, by a powerful reactionary wing with the Church hierarchy.
Interestingly
enough, too, all of these scandals involve sex --- one of basic humans
drives, both for procreation and for pleasure --- and sin, a concept
that has driven Catholic theology since it was codified by St, Augustine
in the 4th and 5th centuries. "Sin" is, of course, a concept
unique to a certain set of religious beliefs, but not to others, and is
totally alien to those of us who are humanists/reasonists/atheists. As
is well known, there is a list of sins which, if committed by Catholics
without confession and absolution, will lead upon death to eternal
damnation in Hell.
In
the list of sins are such matters as pre-marital sex, giving birth
out-of-wedlock, using contraceptives (other than "Vatican Roulette"),
and homosexuality. I must say that I don't know whether or not the
commission of a crime such as sexual assault or a crime such as knowing
of a sexual assault and not reporting it to law enforcement (the latter
being the crime in Pennsylvania on which the former fabled Penn
State football coach Joe Paterno --- a Catholic himself --- got hung
up) are considered sins of the order of magnitude of the sex-related
ones listed above.
Click here for the full article.
Source: OpEdNews
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