RE: Catholic Church Must Be Punished By Law!
September 6, 2010 at 8:06 pm
(This post was last modified: September 6, 2010 at 8:09 pm by Oldandeasilyconfused.)
Quote:My Complaint: Why does the Church get immunity from the law?
An obvious question which I think a lot of people everywhere are beginning to ask.I think the current world wide scandals reflect changing attitudes.
Religion has ceased to be the THE controlling influence in communities all over the developed world. I think people have begun to realise that the bigger churches,such as the Catholics especially, are deeply corrupt and irrelevant. The days of implicit trust and obedience of clerics and their churches are pretty well finished.The time of accountability has begun.
Context: For centuries the Church was indeed above the law. No cleric,no matter how humble, could tried by civil authorities. Those were the days Popes could actually give orders to Princes. The whole furor with Henry V111 was sparked by the power of The Church. Henry's new church simply replaced the Catholic church in terms of social power and control. The Church lost its direct political influence,as the monarch became the legal head of the Church of England,a position which remains to this day.The papal states were not completely abolished until the unification of Italy, in the C19th.