RELIGION HARMS
CHILDREN
Index
The Roman Catholic Church has been bankrupted in many parts of the world due to its failure to protect children from its predatory priests and bishops. When complaints were made, the culprit was moved to another area to continue the abuse. The Church also created decrees and vows of secrecy to help facilitate the protection of these men. The laity were complicit in the crimes of the Church. The evil done by the priests to children was an open secret.
Pope John XXIII gave the bishops secret orders in the 1960's in Crimen Sollicitationis to cover up child sexual abuse.
The Catholic Church calls itself one and holy and Catholic and apostolic. The boast that it is holy insults religions that did less or no harm or even piles of good to children. Paedophiles do not become priests but priests become paedophiles. A paedophile who wanted to have sex with children would be more likely to become a teacher or a father than a priest for it gives them better access to children. There is something about the Catholic faith that causes priests to become paedophiles. It certainly encourages priests who develop paedophile inclinations to actualise them and practice. The culture of secrecy about such matters that protects the abusing priest and demonises the victim makes the temptation too great for them.
The popes of course are at the top and ultimately responsible for making an environment conducive to clerical child abuse. People like to pretend the popes mean well. But until a pope fights for church property to be sold to feed the poor and lives like a poor man and binds up the wounds of the wounded that assumption is unwarranted. It is Catholics merely being too bigoted to see the truth.
PAEDOPHILE PRIESTS
The Catholic Church has been exposed all over the world
for covering up for its paedophile priests and even moving them from one place
to another to prolong their activities.
The religious orders tend to be the worst offenders
and do the most obvious covering up. In
the case of Letterfrack in Co Galway
Some paedophiles claim they have irresistible
urges. If this is true and they are far
from trustworthy, they are not under the control of their feelings all the time
so they could get help. The clergy who
believe it is a compulsion and then hide what paedophile priests have done are
doing worse than they are for they won't have to suffer for what the paedophile
has done. They are using the evil people
to do evil. It does not bother them much
if children are being abused ten times a day by each pervert. By letting the perverts run loose they are as
good as holding the children down while the perverts interfere with them. They are allowing the perverts to take a step
beyond child-molestation to the actual rape and murder of children.
Bishops and priests who protect paedophile priests
or who practice paedophilia should be fired.
The pope will not do it which shows that the Church is corrupt up to the
very top.
When a religion is nothing but blind faith or to be
not far off that kind of faith and is found corrupt the only decent thing one
can do is to walk out of it. It is worse
to be part of a very harmful blind or semi-blind faith than one that is less
harmful. The Church says the scandals
are no excuse for people turning against her but they are when she is an
unnecessary thing, a system of blind or near blind belief, that gives the
opportunity and the protection for the abuse to happen. When the Catholic Church changes doctrine
which it has been doing since its origin the men in purple and red are the ones
who determine what their flocks are to believe and so ought to be rejected if
they are corrupt.
Jesus
said that it is better to die than to turn anybody against him or his
Church. No wonder the Church covers
up. Seeing the offender brought to
justice is part of the recovery process for victims. It is vital to their emotional
wellbeing. But Jesus says the faith
comes first. Better for one to suffer
than for the faith of another to get a battering. The Church teaches that it is better for
empires to fall and the world to go back into the Middle Ages than for the
world to be deprived of the light of God and the power of the sacraments of the
Church and the true faith. It is better
if that is true for the Church to keep clerical child abuse under wraps even if
it does mean doing little about paedophiles
The pope may hug and kiss some children but don’t be
fooled. If a politician were corrupt he would expel him from the
government. If his banker were stealing
from his account he would get him fired into oblivion. He would tell them to do it. But does he fire his clergy who cast cloaks
over clerical child-abuse? No way. He has little concern for innocent children
and his actions betray his words of regret for the actions of paedophile
priests to be false.
The priest cannot disclose what he heard in
confession. A child can tell the
confessor he or she is being sexually abused.
As further protection for the abusers of children, the priest cannot
even broach this with the child outside of confession no matter how much the
priest thinks it is necessary for the welfare of the child. Children may tell
him if they are being molested. The
priest’s silence must be maintained even if it entails letting the abuse go
on. Even if he knows that the child will
be killed he cannot speak. This is
shocking coming from a religion that says that since the human person is
supremely valuable murder or assisting in murder is the worst sin against a
human person. The Church could blackmail
people to tell such things in confession like it blackmails people to go to
confession and permit the priest to tell.
The Church abetting child abuse.
In 2002, Cardinal Connell of
Children should not be permitted to serve at the
altars of the Roman Catholic Church as altar boys or altar girls. The Catholic priesthood uses spiritual
blackmail and politics to murder women by forbidding them to refrain from
contraception or from having abortions to save their lives which is particularly
cruel in the poor countries of the world.
When you become an accessory to murder you have no right to benefits
like honour and obedience. The clergy
take these things though they have no right to them – it is theft. Evil
It is high time the state realised that the people
come first and if that means weaning them off religion then that step should be
taken. God does not come first even though Jesus said he did and the concept
implies he should. Faith in God is evil.
What about the priests who do not approve of
ABUSIVE DOCTRINES
Christianity teaches the good news or gospel, that is its essence. But what is this good news? It is that God has saved us from sin and its penalty. You cannot have the good news without knowing and being grateful for what you have been saved from: eternal torment in Hell. So it follows that people should be warned about Hell before invited to receive the good news. It follows that children should be indoctrinated about Hell. How can you really accept God’s salvation right if you don’t know that salvation is from Hell? To abandon Hell or to say nothing about it is to fail to teach the gospel.
The New Testament claims to be
for everybody even children and it speaks of Hell in frightening terms. Jesus spoke of Hell in his sermons to crowds
which must have included very young children and older children of about 8 to
12 too. Women that wanted to hear him
certainly took all their young children with them. In those days, a female child was a woman at
12 and forced to marry and have babies.
Jesus did no protesting against that at all though he did plenty of complaining
about the scribes and the Pharisees and people not believing in him. Instead he said knowing that a child of 12
hasn’t the consent to get married properly that a woman who divorces her
husband commits adultery. To the honest
mind these girls were not married at all both because they were forced and
because they were so young and because if their husbands really wanted and
loved them they would not be making them pregnant at such a young age. Jesus recognising them as married indicates
approval for the abuse of these girls.
The point is Jesus was capable of wanting children to be taught about
Hell and scared half to death. We see
from the evidence that he actually taught them the doctrine. Even in
apparitions of the Virgin Mary no effort is made to censor the message. At
It is accepted by everybody these
days that teaching children who are so vulnerable and impressionable and who
take all they believe on authority is child abuse. Christianity is a religion of child abuse and
it is no wonder so many of its clerics couldn’t keep their trousers on when
alone with a child.
Love the sinner hate the sin is the chant of all those who have concealed the clerical abuse of children. If you pretend that a sin is a thing and an action that isn't an expression of what a person is or what kind of character that person has, you will find it easy to cover up for paedophile priests in the name of love. You have to pretend like that in order to be able to love the sinner for loving the sinner and hating the sin is impossible. The office monster who plots to get you fired is hating you but loving you in the sense that he wouldn't kill you or hit you so love sinner and hate sin doesn't have anything to say at all to those who wish to learn what doing right is and what wrongdoing is.
Many Church doctrines, the doctrine that Jesus was
nailed to the cross by our sins, that we were born at loggerheads with God,
that we and the people we love can go to Hell forever, that Jesus let demons
into people and later put them out for show are horrific. The Church might say that Jesus put demons in
and removed them for a complicated good purpose but when we don’t know Jesus
like we would any ordinary person would it be right to trust him? We gauge other people on what we see when we
don’t know them very well for what else can we do? The doctrine that God loves us is scary
because this love involves using evil on us or letting it happen which is the
same thing for God makes all things.
It is child-abuse to expose children to these teachings. And they have to be exposed to them for Jesus commanded it. Anybody not just children can be damaged by them and still the Church and its Jesus say, “Go teach all nations”. Also if it is right to teach the gospel, then the unpalatable doctrines should be taught first for Jesus forbade being deceitful which includes a ban on being manipulative so that people know exactly what they are getting into. To trust God means you have to know the horrifying stuff first for otherwise you can’t make an informed decision for Jesus.
The clergy preach doctrines that make severe demands on the flock and they ask that one give all to Jesus Christ. They say that the most important man ever gave his life because he refused to stop preaching the good news. They praise him for that. It follows then that the Church and the priests should live up to a harsher standard of holiness than they do. They should live in huts and eat frugally and give all they have to the poor. They should be happy to report paedophile clergy to the police. They should be happy to resign if they fail to report. They should be happy to confess.
To tell a child that the Bible or Church has the
word of God is dangerous. That book is
full of unedifying material such as God commanding murder and genocide and
Jesus’ insane teachings. The Catholic
Church claims to be infallibly guided in interpreting what God says and the
interpreter is more important than the revealer and
has the most power. It is the clergy
then that gets the power through religion and they get it over innocent people
and children and that is reprehensible.
Most Christians claim that they don’t have to keep
the Law that God gave Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible.
This book commands murder and genocide and killing
heretics and those who don’t belong to the “true faith” for God commanded it
and God must be obeyed for God is never wrong.
The Bible is more explicit and clear on this being God’s will than the
Koran. The fact that some Christians
assume these teachings are the Old Law the Jewish Law and Jesus has given us a
new law means nothing for the new law doesn’t forbid these murders. Also Judaism which is the religion of the Old
Law is the one true faith. All Christians
believe that except they add their own faith is the fulfilment of Judaism, the
completion of the true religion. There
are two true religions and you have to belong to the most up to date one which
is Christianity. Logically if you can’t
get people converted to Christianity you have to advise them to go to Judaism
instead. This means that the Christians
are claiming that the true faith has the right to kill and stir up religious
wars if God commands it for they and Judaism are the one religion except that
Christians are up to date. They are
taking responsibility for those murders.
It also means that Christians if they should give any religion freedom
should give it to Judaism and insist that Judaism has its legal rights to stone
homosexuals and adulterers and so on.
Christianity is a murderous religion in a real sense. One of its principal doctrines is the
doctrine of
The atonement doctrine in teaching that Jesus died to save us implies that if you could get hold of the baby Jesus you would save the world by cutting his throat. It blesses child sacrifice or at least sees this evil as a beneficial thing. The pagans thought that the slaughtering of babies was a beneficial evil.
To instruct and indoctrinate a child in even the
more seemingly innocuous doctrines of these sources is dangerous for you are
saying that what you tell them is the word of God meaning that there are other
doctrines not so harmless from the same source that must equally be inspired by
God. To tell a child then that God says he loves them is to lure the child into
acceptance of an authority that will sooner or later expose them to harmful
doctrines and distorted thinking. To
hang on to the good they have learned and the comforts they have got in
religion they will have to learn to stomach and accept and even like the bad parts
as well. To tell a child that the Church
and the Bible is true and from God is trying to awaken their curiosity about
them so that they will find out about the nasty side and likely embrace it. To teach a child religion is child
abuse. Would you teach your child that
Hitler meant well even if they are not told exactly what he got up to? Of course not. Have some respect for your child. Do not let their Christian teachers and the
parish priest pollute them.
To induct a baby or child into a religion by baptism by which religion claims the right to indoctrinate the child when she is in a vulnerable position is child abuse. The child could have a very different faith if it was a different religion. The purpose of the whole thing is to make the child narrow-minded with the result that the child will tend to be suspicious of or even hate members of different religions. A man believes that God wants children to be treated this way will naturally have problems seeing molesting children as wrong.
Most paedophiles think that they didn’t do wrong by sexually abusing children and blame society for the psychological damage that some victims experience. Any religion that abuses children is encouraging this.
What children need to learn is the basics of right and wrong and not nonsense that God saved them at their baptism and gives them his son in holy communion and that priests forgive sins. The nonsense that Catholic children are exposed to at 7 or eight years of age when they are taken for their first holy communion is disgraceful. Many children are disturbed at the teaching of the Church that the wafer is really a man's flesh and blood. They will take that very literally. They will think that God is tricking them so that they don't taste the meat and blood. The mystery has been used by some priests to argue, "Let me touch your body. It might feel wrong but it is actually right. Don't you see that you can't understand what I want to do to you just like you can't understand what happens at communion?" Children do not have our kinds of fears and so do not need a God to console them in relation to suffering and death. The reason the clergy wants to manipulate them to adopt the God belief is to intimidate them for children do fear magical beings that may come to scare them or punish them.
Christianity and Islam claim that their
faiths save people from eternal punishment in Hell at death. If believing in these faiths helps avoid
this, the worst imaginable disaster, then it follows that these faiths should
be so reasonable and good that they should be able to withstand even the most
thorough critical examination and the emphasis should be on the bad or scary
side and not on the good side. This is
logical. The most important thing is
avoiding Hell so when bad leads to Hell people should be able to check the
religions out for themselves and should not be encouraged to believe until they
do it. But both religions care very
little for evidence. The evidence is
distorted and known only to some theologians and most theologians have open or
hidden abhorrence for this distorting.
For example, when the Bible seems to Christians to say there are three
Gods, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and also says there is only one God the
Christians solved the contradiction by saying there are three persons in
God. So they only assume there is no
contradiction and this assumption is what they stake their faith on not evidence. To do that in the face of possible damnation
in Hell is downright evil! It would be
impossible for a child never mind a mature adult not to hate people who are
perceived as helping the Devil try to get people into Hell.
Also, children can spot things
adults don’t. Jesus and Moses taught on
divine authority, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” very obviously says that
you must put the welfare of everybody around you on the same level as you do
your own which means others come first for you are one person but they are
many. You are expected to sacrifice
yourself but not them so in practice it really means, “Let others walk all over
you.” Children know that lies like that
you can condemn the sin but not the sinner are lies for sin is a bad act that
expresses the kind of person you are and so cannot be treated as separate from
the person. To discipline your child for
lying makes the child feel abused and feel that you are a bad hypocrite when
you pump the lies of religion into her or him.
To tell children that God exists is to abuse them
because since God is presented as the best thing and being possible the
attraction and devotion to him should be like a drug addiction. That is what religion is for, creating a
psychological addiction so that you are at the mercy of prophets, popes and
Bible interpreters. All addictions are
for making you lose emotional and rational control.
Religion is intrinsically violent. It seeks to compel people to believe and do
certain things. Often this is done in a
subtle way by conditioning the victim but this is still violence. To tell people that x, y, z is their duty or
they must or have to do things or believe things like religion does is trying
to force them if they are weak enough and people sense that which is why they
do not take kindly to such maltreatment.
It is trying to make them feel guilty and suffer if they choose to
differ. Instead of guiding people to see right and wrong for themselves
religion issues commands and duties. It
is a terrible misdeed to expose children to religion.
The harsh and deceptive doctrines
of Christianity encourage people to molest children if they are inclined that
way. For example, the marriage bond seeks to create unhealthy relationships in
which the husband and wife’s self-esteem depends on one another. It seeks to unite them too much just as Jesus
said they have to be one flesh, like one person in mind and feeling and
body. In reality relationships should
have a healthy level of detachment. To
fall apart and hate yourself because somebody cheated on you or rejected you
shows great emotional underdevelopment.
You should love yourself and only seek a relationship as a means of
loving yourself in a different way. You
cannot respect others except in so far as you respect yourself. Marriage is intrinsically abusive and based
on the lie that the other person is the person you really want for the rest of
your life – not true there are many people out there who could make you
happier. God approving of marriage means
he can hardly complain if you abuse a child.
The Christian insistence that all wilful enjoyment of anything sexual
outside of marriage is gravely sinful
encourages people to go after children on the grounds that everybody
sins seriously in sexual matters.
Jesus Christ said that to look at a woman lustfully
was as bad as adultery (Matthew 5:28) and that if your eye makes you sin pluck
it out (Matthew 5:29) meaning that this sin should be avoided under all
circumstances and no matter what the inconvenience. Jesus then encouraged extreme guilt about sex
and sexuality. When guilt is that strong
what happens is that people will end up feeling that every sexual feeling they
have is a wilful sexual sin. This
philosophy is very harmful to children.
It increases the natural tendency of child-abuse victims to blame
themselves and feel they deserved the abuse.
Faith in Jesus Christ facilitates those who want to have sex with
children and get away with it. It has
been doing it since it started and it is still doing it now. Christianity hurts children and destroys
their lives by making them feel worse about the abuse they received than they
should. Christianity makes sure the
abuser will destroy their lives.
Despite being frequently into verbal abuse, Jesus
insisted that we must see only the bright side of things and pretend that the
evil does not exist. This is proven when
he said that we must be kind to enemies for God sends his rain on the just as
on the unjust (Matthew 5:44-48) ignoring the fact that nature is more cruel
than good and when he said we must repose on his teachings as on a rock
(Matthew 7:24). His teachings then are
as solid and strong as rock meaning that is how much devotion we must give
them, rocklike unshakeable obedience.
The gospel says that this was spoken to ordinary people. This shows that the Sermon on the Mount in
which these teachings occur is to be taken literally for how else could it be a
rock to the ordinary person who needs their morals on a plate salted and ready?
The only surprise with religious instruction is that not more damage is done. The potential for damage is a very bad fruit and indicates that Jesus was not a divine emissary for he was the one that said you can tell the prophets of God who are really fakes by their bad fruits. It is not actual bad fruits that count the most but the potential ones. After all if it were not for the potential there would be no actual. It is weird how Jesus would have believed in Old Testament figures who did evil things like killing while they functioned as prophets and then tried to discredit bad prophets as fakes. Clearly he was insecure and was resorting to the fallacy that the badness of a person means their message is wrong because he had rivals he wanted out of the way.
The Church teaches that if you go to confession and you want to be forgiven your sin just because you are afraid of going to Hell or if that is your main reason that is okay. So in other words, you love the sin but you fear the punishment which is why you reluctantly give up the sin. How could a paedophile priest feel bad about his sin of child molestation with a doctrine like that? It would be an encouragement to the paedophile tendency to feel that he has done nothing wrong.
GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT
When a child accuses a priest of molesting her or
him the word of the child should be given the most weight for the child’s
rights come first. When a woman accuses
a man of rape she should get the most concern.
It is better to risk an innocent man going to jail than to risk letting
the alleged victim down, for rape is a very heinous crime. False accusers are few and far between and
should not be penalised when their lies are exposed for it will happen that
occasionally a woman has been telling the truth and made to look like a
liar. It is better to tolerate false
accusations than to risk accusing a victim falsely for her rights come first.
In cases where paedophilia may be taking place a guilty until proven innocent approach should be implemented. It is better for loads of priests to be accused in the wrong than for one priest to molest a child thanks to the immunity he gets until his guilt is established. It is better for a number of priests to be wrongly accused than for one child to be suspected of lying when that child is not lying. A priest being cleared does not prove innocence. One child’s life is more important than loads of adult ones for a child is starting life and is more vulnerable. It is better for innocent priests to be jailed for child abuse if it means that even one child will not suffer or be accused of fabricating the allegations. Campaigns must be set up to ensure that guilty until proven innocent in this case and in the case of men accused of raping women becomes part of the law. A priest should be instantly removed should any allegations surface against him. All who are suspected of child-molesting should be named and shamed. They are not entitled to compensation if they suffer in the wrong for protecting children from them until they are cleared is a duty. Moreover, people accused of child-abuse who harbour religious beliefs that can be seen to encourage child-abuse should be feared and suspected more than others who do not.
The priests and bishops of the Roman Church bore one with their apologies for child sex abuse committed by priests and bishops. Many of their apologies have been proven to be insincere by their subsequent actions - by their attempts to prevent justice being done and to keep abuse under wraps and to intimidate those who are making allegations.
No Catholic priest broke ranks to stop and expose his paedophile co-workers in the priesthood. And this despite the fact that they teach that we must suffer to the point of bloodshed for the cause of justice. The whole child-abuse abomination was covered up and steps were taken to move the abusers around to help them find new flesh to violate. The priests during all this time were smug in their virtue and ate their communion every day - eating communion is a declaration that you believe yourself to be righteous and clean from sin and right with God. They judged sinners in the confessional - this too declares that the priest is claiming to be holy enough so that he can be in a position to judge in the place of Christ. Apologies are plenty. Their apologies are hollow. It is hard to believe that people who are so cold could really be sorry. And especially when this smug unjustified sense of righteousness and holiness was carried for years and decades. The evil of the priesthood is proof that religion is self-deceit. It shows that the biggest number of religionists - if not all - must be deceiving themselves. Christianity certainly leads to trouble. Christians hunt for miracles and end up tricked and robbed by evangelists and visionaries. Sick people die for they depend on miracles more than on their doctors and they are let down. Even the Christians themselves admit that most apparitions and miracle claims are untrue or doubtful. Any system of belief that produces self-deceit and depends on it is encouraging paedophiles to believe that God made them the way they are and if they are compelled to abuse it is God's will. Indeed, the Church teaches that God is ultimately responsible for all that happens for he makes all things and keeps all things in existence or they would disappear. The Church does not have the honesty or integrity to openly admit this. A system that is based on self-deceit is encouraging paedophiles to believe that their evil actions are somehow justified and even that they are not in control of what they do to children though they are. The condemnations of paedophilia from a religion of self-deception are worthless. If you advocate self-deceit at all you are advocating that a person must have a right to abuse children and justify it in his mind. Why one form of self-deceit and not another?
Some say that "it is total insanity to argue that people join the priesthood to abuse children! Why not become teachers or doctors instead? Why not become a father and abuse your own kids? A profession seen as celibate and holy would hardly be an attraction for the paedophile. The power to be a priest and the occult abilities to to do priestly duties such as turning bread into Jesus are given at the sacrament or ordination. Perhaps that sacrament has an evil power in it for there is something in the priesthood that makes one self-righteously corrupt and often a danger to children." If so the apologies from the priests for allowing sex abuse to happen are indeed hollow and empty.
The bishop who says sorry for helping clerical child molesters dodge justice but who does not make huge sacrifices to help the victims - pay for counsellors etc - is merely insulting the victims. It is action we want. What use is his sorry? He is asking to be esteemed as somebody making a fresh start - it is all for his benefit. He will never be anywhere near as sorry as the victims were that the abuse happened.
Top of the
Document
With regard to the Catholic priesthood claiming that
they are not all bad in the wake of the clerical child sexual abuse revelations
I have this to say.
First the Church is only an organisation that can be
brought to heel by voting with their feet just like any other organisation
can. If bishops and priests boycotted
the
If laypeople stopped assisting in the ill-done by
handing money to the priests and the Church the pope would soon get his act
together and his rules which are a hindrance and his laziness in tackling the
problem would soon be stopped. Many of
the laity and nearly all the priests just carry on licking
Any priest can be promoted to a position in
authority say as a bishop. When that
happens, he simply covers up any sex abuse involving priests that he hears of
and shuffles offending priests to different areas when there is a complaint it
shows that the rest cannot be any better.
They would just be as bad if they filled his shoes for he is one of
them. The “good” ones become bishops and
they still try to prevent the crimes from being stopped. They still refuse to get their priests put in
some institution where they cannot get near children.
Second, the abusers would pay compensation to their
victims if they were really repentant.
So it happens that from the minute a priest commits the abuse he is an
incorrigible whitewash and hypocrite who could not possibly believe that
persistent sin like that could lead to everlasting damnation. They testify to Christianity not being
true. The bishops, when satisfied that
allegations are true, should pay the compensation so that the priests owe it to
them instead from that point on. They
are all as depraved as each other. Where
is the Holy Spirit who guides them now? They
stand between the victims and restitution to which they are entitled so they
should pay up.
Third, the claim that the crimes of the clerics does
not refute the faith is transparent and they read that it is false when they
read their gospels. It is a lie that is
told to continue manipulating the people.
Christ promised special protection from sin to his true disciples. He said that you are known to be his disciple
by the love you have for the brethren and that lying prophets are known by
their bad fruits. The Roman Church will
complicate things by claiming that you must look at the Church over all and not
just at the blemishes. But Jesus’
statement about the fruits was spoken to people who would not have the time to
do all that research and that thinking.
He said that if your experience of a prophet is not good then you can
walk away from him for it was meant to be a simple test. Hypocritically he did not want anybody to
walk from him and sentenced them to eternal damnation for it – a veiled threat:
“Come back or else!” The claim of Jesus
that those who are really his followers will love tells us something very
important. He is not just saying that
his true followers will love but that their love will be a sign that Jesus gave
them the unique and supernatural power to love for he says that Christianity is
the best religion. It is not good enough
to argue that there will be false Christians who will do evil so that the only
true ones are the good ones. That makes
the sign useless. Clerical child abuse
can and should destroy faith in Jesus Christ.
Notice also Jesus’ teaching by implication strictly forbids the secrecy
and underhandedness that is universal in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. By implication it forbids having a hierarchy
at all. The Catholic Church has no shame
whatsoever regarding child sex abuse by clerics for instead of trying to stop
the problem it moved the suspect priest to another unsuspecting parish. If it
had any shame and the clerical system did not produce psychopaths then the
Church would not be compounding its problem
Fourth, child abuse is a part of Roman Catholic
doctrine which all the clerics support and promote. They want children to honour a man whose
historical existence is not as certain as say that of Joseph Smith Jun as God,
who is to be loved with all our powers to their entirety, himself. They are even to die for that man rather than
blaspheme him like the apostles allegedly did.
That not only is blasphemy against God but demeans themselves. To say that all love comes from God as the
Bible says is to say that we cannot create love ourselves and downgrades human
achievement. It is child abuse to tell
children that it is God’s business what they do. So they are left to worry more about what God
wants than what they feel they should do.
That is no way to teach a child responsibility and imbue
self-esteem.
Religion, and especially Christianity, also gives
paedophiles good reasons to consider their feelings normal. The truth is the feelings are not normal for
they are not about love but about gratification. It is not love to have sex with somebody who
is not old enough to form a life-long loving relationship because they won’t be
mature enough. If the child was really
loved the other person would wait until she or he grows up. But the paedophile goes after the child just
because the child is a child and that is sick.
It is treating the child as a body and not a person. It is the body that is really loved and not
the person. Sexuality between adults be
they heterosexual or bisexual or homosexual must love the person in the body.
Fifth,
Christian forgiveness condones paedophilia.
To forgive a person because some weak or blind or absurd faith demands
that you do is giving a bad reason to let the person off. Therefore it is condoning the sin.
When
an abuser apologises he might say, “I am sorry but I do not ask for your
forgiveness for I have no right to it.”
This is what he would be expected to say. But if he is a Christian he WILL have to ask
for forgiveness and claim that he should receive it. Jesus said we must ask God for forgiveness
and that it is worse to offend God than people when we are to love God most of
all so when you ask God you should ask people quicker. And the gospel of Jesus says we must forgive
for since we are all sinners that have been forgiven others have a right to be
forgiven for we have been forgiven ourselves.
This is a cruel and insensitive gospel.
Peter
once asked Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother if he sins a lot
against him. He asked if seven times
would do. Jesus said not seven times but
seventy times seven (Matthew 18). That
this was meant to be taken literally is shown by Luke 17:4 which commands that
if one is sinned against seven times a day one should forgive when the person
says sorry after each time. Jesus said
one person was as good as another meaning nobody had the right to act superior
and say, “I will not forgive you”. Jesus
died for the undeserving so he showed that he meant we must be softies. So Jesus would have agreed with the Church
forgiving pervert priests and moving them around. Or it could be that Jesus expected the end of
the world to be nigh enough that there would be no time for his rules to be
seriously taken advantage of by those who prove their lack of sorrow by
re-offending. But the Church cannot
admit he erred so it has to accept the former interpretation and it would have
been just like Jesus to have meant the rule to be kept whether the world was to
end soon or not.
Sixth, Jesus was friendly with tax collectors and prostitutes. Tax collectors often abused children sexually in return for writing off debts and they sometimes paid the debts of families in return for sex with the children. Paedophiles were attracted to the profession because they got a high level of legal immunity that enabled them to enjoy their perverted activities. Prostitutes, male and female, often had to sexually abuse children and dominate them to satisfy the depraved audience looking on. Jesus had no time for the rich or the Jewish religious ministers. Even decadent Romans got more respect despite their support for a licentious system of morality that permitted sex with children. Jesus never complained about Jewish men raping girls of ten which was common in a society that made sex objects of female children. Most females were married off while still children. If he had complained, there would have been a storm of incredible proportions and we would know about it. Instead he preferred to risk his life for creating fusses about his alleged relationship to God and so on.
Seventh, the Bible doctrine that the Church is not a
collection of individuals but a unit in which all are mystically one body and
that there is a supernatural solidarity and communion in the body teaches that
we are to blame for each others sins in the Church for if we are not holy
enough that leads God to decline many graces to others for he treats us as a
body not as a gathering of members. So
the “decent” priests say they are as bad as the paedophiles according to their
own standards. They are the ones that
say it so let them. A pile of sins that
don’t physically do a huge amount of harm do enough harm spiritually to make
paedophiles and then make them practise so they are very serious in that respect.
People are only turned off religion by the bad behaviour of clergy in their own religion. The Catholic Church was unaffected by scandal among clerics in other faiths but it was a different story when its own priests and bishops were found to be child abusers or sympathisers with such. This tells us a lot about the believers. They have the attitude, “My religion is good and those other religions are bad and because they are bad the scandals among their clerics don’t bother me and indeed don’t surprise me.” It shows that there is bigotry lurking inside them even if they cannot see it. The sensible attitude is that clerics going wrong prove whatever it is they prove about religion in general not just their own religion in particular.
The tendency of nearly all Catholic clerics to cover
up and the fact that few are left undamaged by celibacy clearly shows that they
should not have any access to children and should not be allowed to teach. Many understandably feel that if a priest is
not angered enough by child abuse to fight the church then it is because there
is some paedophilic tendency in that priest.
RELIGION AND CHILDREN
Paedophiles have often been the Bible’s biggest
fans. In recent years, the stream of priests
and clergymen who have been sexually assaulting children has been constant and
never-ending.
Any book that teaches the existence of God is an
accessory to the crime of paedophilia because it would then seem that God made
paedophiles that way and wants them to be like that. Most paedophiles don’t feel and think they
have done anything wrong. Those that do
say they feel remorse are often not telling the truth. The ones that believe in God will consider
their faith to have a lot to do with this lack of remorse for they will believe
that God made them that way. They will
believe that God made the laws that made them paedophiles and that made some of
them unable to stop abusing children. It
is certain that to say that God exists is logically to imply that he approves
of child-abuse. To say that God allows
paedophile inclinations for a purpose and has no choice but to allow them is
nonsense for God could have created any possible state of affairs he wished. The doctrine of free will says he leaves a
lot of change in our hands which proves that God could have made a very
different world in which the inclination would not have been needed. The concept of God is pro-paedophilia. God himself is worse than any paedophile for
babies are the top targets for his cruelty through their vulnerability to
disease and their dependence on adults.
To believe in God is definitely to at least partly sanction paedophilia
which is so horrific that God should be cursed and blasphemed if that is what
it takes to avoid this. It is vital that
if you are serious about combating paedophilia that you must remove faith in
God from your heart first.
It does no good to point to believers who work
against paedophiles as evidence that counteracts this. Their example means nothing for it is just an
advertisement for inconsistency and it cannot get them off the hook. And we all put our best feet forward too so
example does not amount to very much in our minds.
The example of God believers in all matters does
absolutely nothing to commend belief in God.
They say it does which is why they say example speaks louder than
words. But that is just asking us to
ignore the bad example as if it does not count but it does count if good
example counts. The bad example is
predominant because most believers do wrong in the eyes of their God. So the good example philosophy is simply just
boasting: “God shines through us so we are just great. Believe in him for we show you what he is
like and put the evidence that the belief can do harm out of your mind.” Logically since belief in God does not do
much good generally the belief must be bad then if you accept this example
logic. You cannot condemn a belief by its
abuse but the God belief is different for it is unnecessary. And it can be taken as condoning evil for God
himself says he needs evil. To put it
another way it encourages harm and it is certain that harm should be stopped
whether God wants it or not. The whole
point about fighting evil is that harm has to be minimised or stopped. And belief in God does imply that paedophilia
is okay so paedophiles are not abusing their faith.
A child’s perception is very important. If a child feels abused even by people who
did not mean to do it for sometimes sexual harassment can be unconscious then
the child is entitled to compensation.
These things are very subjective therefore if a child feels sexually
abused then the child should be taken as a real victim of child abuse. If a child feels abused by the Church then
the child has been abused and the Church should pay for it. Much religion is pro-child abuse in many ways
and when abuse happens that it does not approve of it does not do enough to
stop it. The nastier and more capable of
misinterpretation its doctrine is, then the more pro-child abuse it is and the
less it should be overlooked. The Roman
Catholic Church and the Mormon Church and the Fundamentalist Christians are
three examples of cults that in this way openly abuse and demean children. Religion is responsible for upsetting
children even if it tries not to upset them because of the way a child can
perceive. It is still to be blamed.
Religionists hold that even if faith encourages or
leads to child abuse it should still be followed. Christians hold that it is better to believe
in the Church even if it won’t baptise your children unless you let them be
molested by the clergy first. Therefore
religion is to be held responsible for child abuse. It takes it so do not let it deny it. If priests abuse children then blame God and
blame Jesus and blame the Church. If
they are really holy then it follows that the sexual abuse of children is
holy. Trying to take over the minds of
children is a really horrid and violent act – its appalling child abuse.
As a child I felt that the God
the Church had forbade me to do anything if I was sexually abused. I felt it was a sin for I had to sacrifice
myself and encourage evil against me by forgiving the perpetrators. This is as harmful as actual physical sexual
abuse for it removes the feelings of safety that a child should have. It diminishes trust in adults who are seen to
be grudgingly blindly obeyed and whose opinions about God and Jesus are to be
absorbed without hesitation without any regard for yourself. You are just a child and the adults know
better- God can communicate with them better because they are bigger and
smarter and know the ways of the world better.
I was sexually abused by God and the Catholic Church and it is high time
that the resources the Church has to do this are cut off. I mean they abused me sexually by making me
available. I was made a sex-object. Doctrines that are an accessory to child abuse
need to be fought against. When God does
not make people realise these things it is clear that the message that is being
sent to children is that God wants them to be molested. Even the suspicion that he might which is
very easily picked up by a child can have devastating effects. A child will not understand stuff about God’s
mysterious ways. There is no doubt that
when a child believes that God let some man abuse or rape it that the child
believes that God wanted this and the child will feel too guilty and worthless
to do anything to stop the abuse. There
are scores of thousands of cases where children have believed that the men
raping and sexually assaulting them were doing the will of God. That the children believe this so easily
shows that belief in God is propagated not out of concern but to please society
and some eccentrics in dog collars and to fit in with the sectarian neighbours.
Conclusion
It is time to get tough. Use your public representative and write to
her or him. Make her or him see the dangers
of religion for children and eventually the law of the land will preserve them
from the pestilence of religion.
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