Baptism and religious family

[Autumnlicious]

First, i see nowhere in your definition anything about actually doing anything in relation to the Church except accepting its beliefs. Accepting the Church's beliefs in no way means that you support its members. I know a lot of Catholics who dislike the Pope without stopping to be Catholic.

It is patently insane to belong to an organization you don't agree with in some fashion.

Second, belonging to an organization that commits crimes does not make you an accomplice. At all. That is not a long standing legal tradition whatsoever. If a car salesman of Ford kills someone and the higher-ups of the company cover it up, you cannot charge the whole company's employees as accomplices to murder. It really makes no kind of sense.

False. An employee of Ford, if they remain part of the company while fully knowing it engages in criminal conduct and will continue to do so, is in effect helping Ford grow and is thus an accomplice. You are an accomplice if you a) know of the crime and it's nature and b) do the opposite of reporting it (e.g. helping it).

"I was just following orders"-related cases have long set down that if you know something contravenes law, morality or ethics, you have still to make a conscious decision regarding your actions. The less you know, the less you can truly be held for blame, of course. However, even that has a limit with willful ignorance, where a judge can look at you and ask "How could you have /not/ known?"

The Church has an increasing body of evidence it has routinely committed severe crimes and covered them up. Any member of that organization who is informed of those crimes must either choose to remain part of that criminal enterprise (and take the blame and flak for supporting it, for good or ill) or leave it.

This is a moral matter, as the religious always like to say.

Then, take people that are baptized (the main requirement to "belong" to the Church) but have had no link to the Church for 20 years. Would you say these people are guilty as well ?

False once again. Being baptized is a requirement to be a member of the Church (but then again, baptizement applies to all of Christendom, so technically being baptized means you are a Christian within context of the Bible), but being baptized does not automatically make you a member of the Church any more than being raised by Democrats makes you a Democrat. Only participation in an organization is the indicator of being some form of associate or member, regardless of the organizations true scotsman list of what you need to be. Participation.

Participation and support for any entity automatically states that you approve, given your basis for information, and are a part of it; in some way you have made the conscious decision to assist.

Furthermore, as information known changes over time, it is fully unreasonable for one who honestly does not know to be considered anything more than a bystander. But in today's world, that "inability" to know shrinks rapidly.

See it any way you like, it is still a large generalization of a group comprising hundreds of thousands of people, many of which are really decent people.

Many decent people in history have supported monstrous things from genocide to authoritarianism to varying degrees.

I say, Fuck 'em.