What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[abaris]

What I don't understand is why people are willing to basically say "priests are bad" but not willing to say "teachers are bad". Especially since it has happened soooo much more often with teachers.

Part of the problem may be that many of the cases came to light within a short period of time. The brushing under the carpet business and shipping around of bad apples has been going on for decades and now it's game over. So people, me included, get the impression of this being rampant. Most, if not all catholic residential schools had cases of sexual or physical abuse. Agreed, some of them having happened as far as 50 years ago, but some of them pretty recently. Which again brings us to the brushing under the carpet issue.

Also, at least in my corner of the world, this isn't the first case of hypocrisy that came to light. In the early 2000s, must have been around 2003 or 2004, there was a case of gay orgies being celebrated in a seminary. The responsible bishop got suspended. Nothing against gay orgies, but if you preach that being gay is wrong, you should at least rise up to the standards. Otherwise you're just being hypocritical, taking the fun out of everybody's life whilst having at it as if there was no tommorow.

There have been numerous cases of priests having affairs with paritioners. Again, nothing against that, since I think celibacy goes against human nature. But if you're having at it, please don't preach it's wrong to have extramarital sex.

So all of this adds up to a pretty ugly picture and it's no big surprise, people don't make the fine distinctions.

Well, I think that historically, we can all agree that Jesus was a real person. Whether or not you believe all that is said about Him is a different story, but the fact that there was a real person in history named Jesus who established Christianity, is fact as far as history is concerned.

No, we can't agree on that, since this is still very much up for debate. Truth is, there's neither physical evidence for his existence nor for his non existence. And, at least as far as we can say it now, there never will be.