Pretty sure this can be solved in the same way as players colluding at Omaha can be solved. If 2 villains run above reported all-in EV enough over a sufficient sample, they are probably sharing hole cards.

For real, this is even a question?

I just ran across a review from Andrew Sullivan of a new book about homosexuality in the Catholic Church. It looks impressively well-researched:

The author, Martel, who is gay himself, estimates that 80% of the population of the Vatican are gay, and:

Obviously I'm not drawing a direct link between homosexuality and pedophilia, but I think that within the Catholic Church, the two are related in a couple of ways. First, I do think that the vicious repression of sexuality is a contributor to pedophilia. Secondly, the fact that the Vatican is wall-to-wall insanely hypocritical closet cases would be a huge factor in child abuse being covered up, because every gay man in the Vatican is also at constant risk of exposure, shame and disgrace.

Of course, as a gay Catholic, you can imagine the effect the book had on Sullivan. He talks about it here:

Where is Sullivan going from here?

Naturally.

Oh ok so from 99.99999% wrong to just 99.99%. important disctinction there imo

My pony sucks

This is ****ing gold.

in case anyone forgot how much lawyers and the catholic church deserve all the hate.

I had one of those ridic -allinev graphs in omaha for so long I get irrationally upset at other pros graphs.

Recently I've been hot in flips but getting destroyed when I have people totally dominated, sigh. I gave up looking it was just depressing.

I have a little sympathy here, honestly. The lawyer has an obligation to his client to argue for leniency in sentencing, and such argument must be based on the premise that the facts of the case are as the jury decided. Everyone would agree that aggravating factors - for example, if the sexual abuse occasioned physical harm to the child - should result in a harsher sentence. Pell's lawyer is trying to argue - very inartfully - that in Pell's case there are no such aggravating factors. So if the issue here is "dude what is up with that phrasing, 'vanilla sex', wtf, gross" then I totally agree. But if the argument is "the lawyer is a monster because he's arguing that Pell's child rape is only a little light child rape, not the serious kind", then that's his job. He can't choose not to argue that.

BBV is down the road, bro.

Gotcha, that seems like a reasonable point. If a fewer proportion of priests have the desire to abuse kids then you'll probably see a reduction in the number of kids abused. Of course, the abusers that don't end up in the job might end up finding other ways to do it but I don't suppose there's much you can do about that other than increase oversight everywhere.

Religions have never had issues with murder, genocide, and war. Hell, Catholics had The Crusades.

The Church isn't built upon the rock of our faith. It's built upon hypocrisy.

This describes my upbringing. Grew up in an Irish/Italian neighborhood a stone's throw away from a church. Most of my family remains Catholic and believes in many of the tenets.

Thing is that this goes further back than just the 20th century. Popes in the past used papal infallibility as a shield to cover up their numerous mistresses and sexual deviancy as early as the 9th century. Cardinals have used the power of the church to protect themselves from criticism for well over a millennium.

This was either ignored or accepted for fear of social or legal consequences for the accuser for centuries. It's only now that we have progressed as a society that people have begun to speak out.

Hard to understate this point. Even after the various Crusades, continental Europe was a bloodbath thanks to various wars over (among other things) attempts to keep the Catholic church as the dominant religion.

Some EIGHT MILLION people died in the Thirty Years' War alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

Yeah.

I can get behind spirituality. I truly can’t understand anyone supporting the Catholic Church at this point. It has to the the #1 worst institution of all time for causing death, suffering and misery.

Hell for that matter Catholics and Protestants were merking each other left and right in my lifetime in Northern Ireland, I still remember my parents watching Cronkite reports on the Troubles. (I get that it wasn't primarily a religious struggle but there were absolutely religious undertones)

That's why they get their hooks into people while they are still young. The things you learn when you're a child, no matter how nonsensical, can stick for life.

Who picks up a religion in adulthood? Cult members, that's who.

Mao Zedong and CCP killed many more than that in less than 30 years.

Stalin did a number too.

Unlike Catholic Church, communism doesn’t seem to have any redeeming qualities to offset some evils.

While certainly those pedophiles who didn’t or don’t go in the priesthood might also likely assault children, it is a bit of a perfect storm. By being a priest they are given respect, authority and access. This makes it much easier for them to act.

So even if they did carry on outside of being a priest it would be significantly more difficult for most of them who don’t end up in a similar position. And there are not many other positions like that. While there is more skepticism of priests inside the Catholic Church now, 40 years ago they were unquestioned and unassailable. Much like that Abducted in Plain Sight documentary, families would be actively, albeit u knowingly, set their children up to be molested. It was trivially easy for a priest to arrange alone time with a child. In fact it was considered an honor for a priest to take such an interest in a family and their child.

The Catholic Church used this as a hidden recruiting tool. Their stringent no marriage/ no sex rules made becoming a priest a pretty honerous choice for anyone who was not trying to hide their sex life. For those people it allowed them a place of status and protection all while hiding their sex life, which they were doing anyways. I don’t think homosexuality and pedophiia are related at all, but I do think the opportunity the Catholic Church provided them was similar, and why you have an inordinate high number of priests in those categories.

It is absurd that the church still has these rules for priests and nuns.

I think this is one of the exmples that shows that sexual orientation is fluid to an extent. Humans in general are much more flexible about their sexual partners than they might like to admit.
If the choice is between a) abstinence and b) have sex with whoever is available many/some will choose b). If the only available partners are men they will have sex with men. We can see this happen in prisons.
When they can't satisfy their sexual needs with either men or women some will go as far as to abuse children.

Good post. I'd add that the Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality being something to be hidden only exacerbates this. Obviously pedophilia is not something that should be accepted openly like homosexuality.

The hopeless find a home in religions as well. Why do you think missionaries go to third world countries to proselytize?

If I was vulnerable for one reason or another and some organization comes around, promises me that everything will be all right and that I'll be rewarded with eternal bliss in the afterlife, I'm signing up in a heartbeat. When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

Cults, psychics, and some pretty evil pseudo religions target people in crises.

Even we’ll meaning people target people in crises.

“I will pray for you.”
“Come to church with me.”

I get a **** ton of the "I will pray for you." type of thing from believers. Sometimes it's genuine. My mother says it a lot. From strangers, it's more of a "Oh you poor thing. I'll give a **** about you for 10 seconds before I go to sleep."

I express gratitude as those people are normally well-meaning rather than exploitative. Even if their gesture rings hollow to me, it apparently means something to them.

That's not always the case. I've met my share of Christian missionaries in China. They come over under the pretense of being English teachers but are really there to invite students to illegal underground churches in order to convert them. It's no coincidence that most of the proficient English-speaking Chinese students I've met are also fundamentalist Christians. These people care about numbers and they'll lie if they need to in order to get attendees. They're legit POS.

Religion in China is super shady right now. Communism left a spiritual void that a whole lot of unsavory characters are trying to fill.

I actually have personal experience sitting in a meeting with a pseudo Buddhist sect where the founder claimed to be another prophet. One of his proofs is he knew the correct location of the third eye (the red dots on Buddha, Jesus, and a bunch of random gods) was between the eye brows and not on the forehead.

There were secret manuals on sale. The meeting was held in a home in suburban NJ donated to him by a believer.

It was one of the few times I explicitly told a relative to never contact me again.

When I was there, China had a list of government-approved religions and built places of worship. Religious ceremonies outside of them were illegal. Religious leaders had to be licensed by the government and are often CCP members, making them arms of the government.

Proselytization is illegal. While foreign missionaries will just be booted out of China, the people converted can be imprisoned, tortured or reindoctrinated.

11 year old Argentinian girl gives birth after abortion denied following rape