Priests and sex, a bad mix
A Montreal priest has been found guilty of sexually abusing an altar boy for three years; he won’t be sentenced till March.
Meantime, another Montreal priest wants parents to pull their kids out of the government sex ed classes and teach them from a book he has prepared.
There’s a good satire source right now called Le Revoir, but it’s only available via Facebook and it seems to only be headlines and pictures. If you’re on FB it’s worth following. They just posted a dead-on piece linking those two stories.
Ephraim 08:26 on 2019-01-11 Permalink
Didn’t a Catholic Private School already lose a battle over teaching the Ethics course that went all the way up to the Supreme Court? Do they really need the legal costs of this? They can use the money to pay compensation to all those who have been abused by the Catholic church…. the Duplesis orphans still haven’t seen an apology or money, not to mention all those children abused. Seems to me that some of the priests could use a course on ethics.
Chris 10:15 on 2019-01-11 Permalink
Ephraim, are you thinking of Loyola High School v. Quebec? LHS won that in 2015.
“Could use a course on ethics?” Yeah, they could start right at the beginning: lying is wrong. The church is based on a lie. God is a lie. The gospels are a lie. Even the very existence of Jesus is likely a lie. When your starting point is pathological lying, I don’t expect a whole lot of ethical behaviour to follow.
The church has stood in the way of so much: heliocentrism, women’s suffrage, birth control, tampons, divorce, same-sex relations, civil partnerships, interfaith partnerships, abortion, blasphemy, sex outside marriage, masturbation, children outside wedlock, etc. All to defend their lies. There’s really no need to listen to any of their crap.
At least they’ve given up on seriously opposing being criticized. So Le Revoir and I won’t get burned at the stake. 🙂
Tim S. 12:20 on 2019-01-11 Permalink
Chris, I’m not going to get too deep into your claims, but I just feel I ought to point out that claiming ‘God is a lie’ has exactly as much factual basis as saying ‘God is truth.’
Ephraim 13:13 on 2019-01-11 Permalink
Hmm, it wasn’t a “total” victory, they can teach Catholicism but had to also teach respectfully and unbiased about other religions and ethics. The school wanted to be exempt from teaching the course but instead still had to, just that it wasn’t blocked from teaching Catholicism.
But without getting into the whole question of the validity of religion or even the existence of a higher being, the point here is that it’s a little ironic for the Catholic church to tell people these things when it can’t manage to get it’s “management” to be ethical enough to actually follow the same rules.
Chris 14:04 on 2019-01-12 Permalink
Tim S., how do you figure?
There was a horrible bus crash in Ottawa today. Or was there? *I* say it was a cloaked alien ship projecting a hologram and telepathically implanting memories into bystanders.
Is that a lie? I mean, it’s *possible*, right? Can you *prove* it false?
If that’s the kind of thing you mean, then, yes, of course I grant that it’s *possible* Yahweh or/and other gods exists. Duh.
But that level of uselessly pedantry gets us nowhere. It makes words like true, false, real, and unreal useless. We have to trust our eyes and ears and cameras and microphones (to a large extent). You’ve heard of Occam’s razor, yes?
If one makes a claim, then one needs to present evidence. If one makes a *huge* claim, then one needs *huge* evidence. If none is offered, then one’s claim is rejected.
When I say “god is a lie” I mean it like “the alien spaceship theory of the Ottawa bus crash” is a lie. i.e. it’s theoretically possible, but there’s just no credible evidence for it, and it fails Occam’s razor.
Or perhaps you have compelling evidence for the existence of Yahweh, that no one else on Earth has yet presented?
Kate 15:49 on 2019-01-12 Permalink
Chris, the initial story was about priests, but it’s about how an organization which has harboured and protected practitioners of sexual abuse against children still has the gall, at this late date, to claim the authority to ordain moral education for them. The existence of God is neither here nor there.
jeather, I don’t lightly delete items, so no, this comment isn’t going anywhere.
jeather 15:32 on 2019-01-12 Permalink
Can you just delete the really boring anti-religion stuff? It’s getting so old.
Vaguely related you might want to note that they are doing a consultation on fees in public schools. (I keep ranting about how paying for supervision over lunchtime is wrong, now I got to say it somewhere that might matter.) http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/en/parents-and-guardians/references/consultation-on-school-fees/
Chris 20:26 on 2019-01-12 Permalink
hmmm, so much for not getting burned at the stake. 🙂 🙂
My last paragraph did indeed veer off-topic, sorry about that. I’ll endevour to stay better on-topic.
My other comments, I think, were on-topic. I agree it’s galling for them to ‘claim the authority to ordain moral education’. In support of that position, I argued that they are liars and that they have pushed against truth and justice on so many past occasions. Tim disagreed with my definition of “lie” and I tried to clarify it.
jeather, I too sometime find some comments here old and repetitive, but that doesn’t mean I call for their erasure. Instead, I try to learn from others’ views, or I just ignore them.
jeather 21:35 on 2019-01-12 Permalink
Chris, feel free to ignore my comments, then. I find your reflexive “ha ha religion is so stupid” boring and off-topic. (Your first comment was mostly free of that.)
Fair enough, Kate.