Damned Catholics

[HappySkeptic]

The various churches flocked to be part of the residential school program, because it was a way to convert the heathen natives to their brand of Christianity. The RC Church was the biggest by far, and it seems they were the greatest abusers.

The government wanted to do something about the "Indian problem", and education was reasonable. However, the other purpose of the schools was to "beat the Indian out of them", and took the children away from family and anyone who would protect them. The adult natives were essentially wards of the state, pushed onto reservations, and no-one liked them. Only by destroying native culture could the "problem" be fixed.

It was a dark chapter in Canadian history, but the RC Church covered up the deaths of the children in their care, telling the families that they "ran away". And then there is the physical and sexual abuse, which was endemic. Yeah, the RC Church has a lot to answer for, and the government is responsible for a racist and genocidal policy.

[Fake Messiah]

Pope Francis instates harsher penalties for priests who commit crimes such as sexual abuse, and the crime of female ordination.

Under the new code, a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, including priestly ordination or the diaconate, will be automatically excommunicated, as will be the woman.

In 2008, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree stating that any bishop attempting to ordain a woman would incur automatic excommunication. In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI deemed the attempt to ordain a woman a “grave crime.”

Proponents of female ordination have interpreted this latest reform as a final blow to their cause.

https://religionnews.com/2021/06/01/pope...penal-law/

[Fake Messiah]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a video saying the Catholic Church must take responsibility for its role in running Canada's residential schools for indigenous children after the discovery of the remains of 215 children at one former school

[Fake Messiah]

OK, maybe I could have put this in the humor section (it's not exactly news), but I was leafing through Catholic Almanac from 1935 (online), and the Letter section looks as if they were copying theology from Ken Ham's website:

[Fake Messiah]

Pope rejects German cardinal's resignation over sex abuse scandal





Maybe the pope should resign along with all the clergy and let people pray at home. I mean if they believe in an omnipotent God then he can hear them pray from all the places.

[The Grand Nudger]

No, no, if a pope refuses to absolve the catholic church through resgnation either his own or some others.....that's an improvement. The apple is not bad, the tree is bad.

The catholic tree should not and cannot produce bad apples. That's a straight failure condiiton,. and they have in that event...very much....failed.

[Fake Messiah]

Church still incapable of saying there is no excuse for a priest abusing a child

They may have attracted positive PR for the Church, but the new measures for dealing with clerical abuse are a million miles away from being good enough.

I don’t believe it is possible to read the most recent changes to canon law — the law of the Catholic Church — without feeling utterly let down by Pope Francis. The Pope who promised so much, but has changed as little as possible.

Bear in mind that although the penalty can include removal from the priesthood, it doesn’t explicitly say anywhere that the priest involved can be sent to jail (it is implied in some sections of the document).

But there is another clause, and it undermines everything else in the document.

There are a number of laws which deal with how penalties are to be applied. One of them — Article 1324 — says that penalties must be reduced if the perpetrator was drunk, acting in the heat of passion, or was “gravely and unjustly” provoked.

How is it possible in any sane world for a Pope and his Church to seek to command authority when, on the one hand, they are claiming to have strengthened canon law to protect children from abusers and, on the other, they write in so many get-out clauses to protect the abuser?

There is no court in the democratic world where a person accused of abusing a child can admit the offence and still escape punishment by claiming to have been under the control of alcohol or responding to provocation by the child.

How do you claim provocation? How do you deny it? How is it even possible for a priest, with years of training and experience, to be “provoked” into committing an abusive act against a child? How can language like that be allowed to stand in a document that has allegedly taken the best minds of the Vatican a decade to prepare? How is it not possible for the Church to say, in its fundamental law, that there is simply no excuse whatever for the abuse of a child by a priest?

If this is really the best the Vatican can do, despite the spin when it was released, it’s a million miles away from being good enough. It proves only one thing. Where the Church is concerned, nothing ever really changes.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/co...08185.html

[The Grand Nudger]

[Fake Messiah]

Bishops think that they have authority over politicians.

US bishops set collision course with Vatican over plan to press Biden not to take Communion

During the virtual event, U.S. bishops are expected to approve a motion to begin drafting a document on “Eucharistic coherence" that would exclude Catholic political figures who support abortion rights from receiving Communion.

If they do proceed, the bishops will have opened a breach with Pope Francis and the Vatican, which has all but instructed the bishops not to go ahead with the motion.

Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chair of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities and one of the main figures supporting a pastoral statement about Communion told The Associated Press in April, “Whether intentional or not, [Biden is] trying to usurp our authority."

https://www.rawstory.com/amp/us-bishops-...2653407200

[HappySkeptic]

Bishops think that they have authority over politicians.

Preventing a Catholic from having communion is, in their beliefs, equivalent to damning someone to hell -- unless they repent and come back to communion.  The RC church believes they have literally been given the keys to heaven, and no-one gets there except by them.

This authority (plus inquisitions) used to give the church power over kings.

If the bishops do this, they are literally trying to blackmail a president, using threats of eternal torture.