I want to preface this by saying I’m not here to shit on Catholicism and it’s believers. As with many cases, my problem is with people in power.
While it is true that the Vatican has never been directly involved, the same can be said about the US government and we’re currently seeing that the policy isn’t as rigid as advertised. The stain on the Vatican is due to inaction. There are enough cases of this happening that the public has associated it with the religion as a whole. One would think that the leader of any organization that finds out one of its members is exploiting their role to abuse someone would have that person stripped of their rank and turned over to the authorities along with anyone that aided the bad actor. Were Dominos to find out a branch of their restaurants were using their pizza deliveries as a means of distributing drugs, they would close the business, fire everyone involved, and turn over any existing evidence to the police.
Even if the Vatican genuinely didn’t know about the scandal until it made the news, it still didn’t do anything about it until long after the public image was damaged. You would think the voice of God on earth would channel some of that divine wrath at the person who broke their oath to the church, broke their oath to their flock, broke the law of the land, had sex out of wedlock, had homosexual sex, harmed a child, and did it all in one go and occasionally multiple times over the course of decades. That’s 6 different things that the church has taken a strong stance to condemn. Were it you or me they would be quick to call us devils. Instead we can sum up the response in a jpeg and it sounds about as wrathful as a zoning board meeting.
That in turn brings me to the real issue here, of isn’t the church that people are angry at, that’s just where the anger goes when they don’t have the scope to see the real problem. The problem lies in tribalism and inaction in places of power. The Vatican didn’t cut off the tainted limb because it was one of theirs, that means it can’t be bad. When a police officer murders a minority or beats his wife, the rest don’t bat an eye because a member of their tribe couldn’t possibly be a bad guy. The reason politicians won’t close ranks and publishing the Epstein class is because that would mean admitting their peers are bad. To admit fault in the tribe is to weaken the tribe and a weak tribe cannot remain powerful. Instead they blame the victims and hide the truth until the entire body dies of sepsis then have the gull to ask why no one wants them to survive.
I want to preface this by saying I’m not here to shit on Catholicism and it’s believers. As with many cases, my problem is with people in power.
While it is true that the Vatican has never been directly involved, the same can be said about the US government and we’re currently seeing that the policy isn’t as rigid as advertised. The stain on the Vatican is due to inaction. There are enough cases of this happening that the public has associated it with the religion as a whole. One would think that the leader of any organization that finds out one of its members is exploiting their role to abuse someone would have that person stripped of their rank and turned over to the authorities along with anyone that aided the bad actor. Were Dominos to find out a branch of their restaurants were using their pizza deliveries as a means of distributing drugs, they would close the business, fire everyone involved, and turn over any existing evidence to the police.
Even if the Vatican genuinely didn’t know about the scandal until it made the news, it still didn’t do anything about it until long after the public image was damaged. You would think the voice of God on earth would channel some of that divine wrath at the person who broke their oath to the church, broke their oath to their flock, broke the law of the land, had sex out of wedlock, had homosexual sex, harmed a child, and did it all in one go and occasionally multiple times over the course of decades. That’s 6 different things that the church has taken a strong stance to condemn. Were it you or me they would be quick to call us devils. Instead we can sum up the response in a jpeg and it sounds about as wrathful as a zoning board meeting.
That in turn brings me to the real issue here, of isn’t the church that people are angry at, that’s just where the anger goes when they don’t have the scope to see the real problem. The problem lies in tribalism and inaction in places of power. The Vatican didn’t cut off the tainted limb because it was one of theirs, that means it can’t be bad. When a police officer murders a minority or beats his wife, the rest don’t bat an eye because a member of their tribe couldn’t possibly be a bad guy. The reason politicians won’t close ranks and publishing the Epstein class is because that would mean admitting their peers are bad. To admit fault in the tribe is to weaken the tribe and a weak tribe cannot remain powerful. Instead they blame the victims and hide the truth until the entire body dies of sepsis then have the gull to ask why no one wants them to survive.