Given the reference you made elsewhere to Anselm I'm going to consider the act of atonement to include some notion of restitution. I'm warmer to that idea than I am doing it to say sorry as per the opening statement of the article but I'm not convinced that doing that which you should be morally required to do is actually restitutive.

It's not the question of whether selling those houses and contributing to a credit union is of itself a reasonable act of contrition, it may be, but if the church should be doing that with the limited funds selling those houses would raise it's whether some of the other resources of the church should be deployed in assisting the poor to a greater extent than they currently are.

I don't think the church is morally required to sell those houses but I do think it's morally obligated to do more than it does. I also agree with tame_deuces that the specific schemes suggested are flawed but if there's scope to add additional funding to the schemes the church already runs then they should be doing this anyway.

What is this thread about? According to Forbes, Catholic Charities is already the third largest charity:
1
United Way
3,903 4,140 91 85 100
2
Salvation Army
1,698 2,828 88 82 124
3
Catholic Charities USA
1,607 4,600

You'd do well to consider the difference between what a church gives and what a church raises.

The thread is ostensibly about whether raising money by selling some houses is an appropriate response to the failure of the church to protect children entrusted to it.

It is generally wise to read what the thread is about, before making comments like these.

I wasn't quite sure what question the thread was really asking so I didn't know how to respond, but if it's

It seems that if we were talking about that being the entirety of the response it would be bizarre. But as an additional act of penance (if you will) it seems reasonable enough, along with all the other things they ought to be doing to make sure those responsible are held responsible and to prevent future abuses

How much time did you spend thinking before you made this post? Was it more or less than your first post ITT?

Yeah, that was one where assuming he's just trolling is actually the charitable interpretation...

The Scottish Catholic church also does much charity work for the poor. Look it up. Imho, the article refers to "helping the poor" as if the church hasn't done much good in the community and has spent its time living a high life and committing sexual crimes. In that way it was unfair. Obviously, the Church should just kick out sexual offenders. There are governmental civil and criminal procedures already in place to further judge and punish any guilty parties in the church. They will decide about the houses.

Yes, I'm aware of that and really you could have assumed that I am aware of that. My issue is with the assumed moral goodness of religions. Here we have a religion, forced by bad press to sell assets as a way to basically buy off the victims of sexual abuse, after failing in their attempt to cover up that abuse, and yet the organisation itself still stands for good and is moral in the eyes of many many people.

But, as usual, my point is non-specific, poorly articulated and no doubt full of holes but this time I can't be bothered to eat the kind of **** I normally get in the hope of eliciting some kind of insight or generally improving my argument one way or the other so I'm not going to post about this again.

I think the problem is that you claim to be open minded, claim to be learning in this forum, claim to be changing your mind about things, and then post stuff like in this thread , or like this other post from today , which seem to show that you still hold the same ideas and beliefs about religion as you did when you arrived here.

What is it that makes religion this overarching bogeyman for you? Did you get scared in church as a child ( this is slightly tongue in cheek)? Yes, there are lots of bad things about it, but thats often because people do bad things. Why arent you also raging and railing against, I dunno, inequalities in the workplace, or education failing our children, or some current dictators corrupt regime? ( perhaps you are, and I dont know about it)

fwiw, I find posts like this:

much more tilting. Like, how hard can it be to simply ask a question without immediately suggesting a tendentions interpretation/answer.

I strongly suspected that to be the reason, given the wording of the OP, and I have 'issues' with that attitude.

I really don't think that's the problem at all. I could have never changed my mind about a single thing I believe in my time here but if I were arguing it to an acceptable level I'm sure that no one would mind that.

Like Bananarama said 'it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it'.

This isn't the forum to discuss those other issues.

So, do you spend an equal, or greater amount of time discussing and railing against those issues, with an equal or greater amount of energy and dislike, as you do for religion?

I am just wondering what it is about religion particularly that bothers you so, as opposed to all the other "wrongs" that are happening, or have happened?

It's not that what you're doing here is acting like a narrow-minded bigot, it's that you're doing it while presenting yourself as being open-minded and learning about things.

Wait. No. Acting like a narrow-minded bigot *STILL* gets you in trouble. You're just making it even worse on yourself by pretending to be open-minded and learning about things.

There are plenty of areas where you can be upset with religion in general, and you can have lots of complaints about the structures and organization of a specific religion. But the choice of complaints you raise is simply absurd, and even more so in the contexts in which you raise them. And you magnify the absurdity even further when you say "Well, I wasn't really making a specific point..." because it makes you look like you don't even bother *THINKING* about your objections. It's like you just object to things simply to object to them and not because you have any particular reason to object to them.

Then it's a non-question. People assume religions have a moral obligation to the poor because religions say they have a moral obligation to the poor. Likewise people assume that businesses have a desire to make money because business (usually) say they desire to make money.

So a better question would have been "has the Catholic church squandered it's right to claim moral authority" or something similar, which is not what you asked.

OK

Very much this. I mean, for frith's sake, the morality of the Catholic church has to be one of the easiest targets for an atheist yet you still manage to muck it up.

Just for the record:

This confirms that you didn't even read the OP/article. The article is an opinion piece and it suggests that selling stuff would be a place for the Church to start regaining moral authority.

Furthermore, the sums raised should be used to "helping to lift its poorest brothers and sisters out of the clutches of the evil payday loan firms", the article suggests, not to "buy off victims of sexual abuse".

How can you get pretty much literally everything wrong about the OP/topic (in particular those parts where the only requirement is reading comprehension) and then bluster about the "**** you normally get"?

You don't have to keep prefacing replies to me with 'FWIW' or 'for the record' or 'for clarity' Just say what you want to say, or don't.

Yes, "buy off victims of sexual abuse" was poor wording because they're not necessarily going to benefit from the proceeds of the whatever sales occur. What the church is doing, is buying back their good standing, and that's going to include (potentially) the forgiveness of the victims themselves as well as improving or repairing public opinion, that's what I meant by 'buying off'.

It's transparent manipulation of public opinion, it's beyond contemptible, if a government behaved like this they'd be a laughing stock right up till they were voted out at the next election.

notsureifserious.gif

You do realize that financial reparations are exactly the kind of thing through which institutions - among them governments - usually handle this kind of thing?

MB - what should the Catholic church do in light of the scandal, in your opinion?

Once again I must ask... how much time did you spend thinking before you made this post?

It's actually becoming hard to imagine a scenario that would finally shake the faith of the followers of the Catholic church and cause them to actually abandon it. Apparently, hundreds of years of corruption, unethical manipulation, outright lies, widespread child abuse, murder and torture, being devastatingly wrong when offering explanations of how god's universe works despite claiming to be the divine authority and to speak for their god on that matter.... are not enough.

All forgotten, especially if the 'contrition' is expressed financially. Maybe they should sell themselves an Indulgence or two.

stunned.gif

What occurred to me first are words also used in the title of the article linked in the OP. I think that they should 'cease to exist'. They have repeatedly demonstrated themselves unfit.

This is a different argument again.