Onlycardleft t1_j87mh3j wrote on February 12, 2023 at 6:13 AM

Reply to comment by PuzzleheadedEssay198 in Catholic officials seek loophole in WA bills on child abuse reporting by littleblackcar

First, 35.5% of the people in Washington are religious (attend church), of which the largest group, 12.2% are Catholic. That is about 4.3%. I think the next largest church is LDS/Mormon. But Catholics vote in higher numbers than average. (Google checked.)

Second, there is a history of discrimination against Catholics (both as a religion and based on ethnicity) in Washington state. I am old enough to remember when my father applied for a job with a public school district in the late 60s, and the issue of “whether we want to give that job to a Catholic” was discussed by the local school board at a public meeting. Pejorative remarks were pretty common in some, but not all, communities before 1970. The Klu Klux Klan was very active in the PNW (WA and OR) in the first half of the 1900s, and burned a cross on the lawn of a local state legislator who happened to be Catholic. Signs saying “No Irish Need Apply” were code for “No Catholic Need Apply”. For this reason, I think practicing Catholics are somewhat alert to how their legislators vote in issues that are specifically directed to Catholics. On social media like Reddit there are a lot of comments about the Catholic Church which do not distinguish between the parishioners, and work done by Catholic hospitals, housing, mental health and addiction treatment on one hand, and abusive priests on the other hand. 4.3% of a high percentage voting block is enough to get a legislator’s attention, especially if they are aware of the sensitivity of those voters to past discrimination.

I am in no way minimizing the actions of abusive ministers, priests, or Boy Scout leaders. Twenty years to life would be a fair prison sentence. But anyone involved in sexual child abuse cases on a professional level can pinpoint the moment the realized, in shock, how prevalent it was. I do not think we have really developed a systematic way to deal with the problem, or fund the solution, that is accepted and understood on a broad scale. We tend to deal with individual cases when when they affect someone we know. About 1 in 7 girls and 1 in 25 boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18.

PuzzleheadedEssay198 t1_j87nqnc wrote on February 12, 2023 at 6:28 AM

The whole region is still a haven for far right activity to this day because of those roots laid back then, but also the influx of Asian and Hispanic people has made those same groups much less discriminatory towards European Catholics as long as they would also act shitty to Catholics from Latin America, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

You can’t NOT be well aware of those signs because YALL WONT SHUT UP ABOUT THEM. Every St. Patrick’s day I have to explain the difference between the way Irish were treated and the way black people are STILL treated, the fact that indentured servitude and slavery are fundamentally different things, and the one sided rivalry between the Freemasons and the Catholic Church.

That said, the reason why we don’t discern between The Church and The Followers is simple: continuing to attend services, perform rituals, and tithe to the church is a form of support- and supporting an organization, tacit or implicit, that has gone out of its way to cover up and excuse rampant sexual abuse of children is inexcusable. You fundamentally cannot compare the prejudices of the past to the behaviors of today.

And despite KNOWING this reputation, KNOWING how this would read, they STILL have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern day where God’s Law is functionally meaningless in the Pacific Northwest.

Onlycardleft t1_j87oeyo wrote on February 12, 2023 at 6:35 AM

> That said, the reason why we don’t discern between The Church and The Followers is simple

Who is “we”?

Edited to add: I apologize if I offended you. It was not my intent. I was responding to your “f-off” post, read my comments in that context. I have spent some years as a GAL for children, many of whom have been abused or neglected. I have friends who have been abused. I think we, as a society, have made little progress in dealing with sexual child abuse and behavioral health issues as preventative or remedial treatment. And while the Catholic abuse scandal has unique characteristics, it is inaccurate to view it in isolation. Rather, it is part of a larger social and behavioral health problem. Criminal prosecution is essential, but we need to provide funding for treatment as well. As aweful as abuse by Catholic priests is/was, it is only a small percentage of total sexual child abuse incidents. 1 in 10 children are sexually abused, mostly by people in their household or by other relatives. Many more children are subject to physical violence or neglect. (And don’t get me started on lack of funding for addiction treatment.) So I think we are arguing over color of the guillotine.

I am not responding further to the gentleman.

PuzzleheadedEssay198 t1_j87p84i wrote on February 12, 2023 at 6:45 AM

>”On social media like Reddit there are a lot of comments about the Catholic Church which do not distinguish between the parishioners, …. on one hand, and abusive priests on the other hand.”

“We” is assuming you were lumping me in that group while you sit on a high horse making excuses for the second wealthiest religious institution on God’s Green Earth.

You also followed that with “I am in no way minimizing the actions of abusive ministers, priests, or Boy Scout leaders.” And then went on about how there’s no good solution to the problem, when the solution is staring you in the face- you hold the offenders accountable. That seems to have worked with that last group and hasn’t been applied on a meaningful scale to the first two because of the raw magnitude of the institution, and since they won’t hold THEMSELVES accountable it falls upon the state to fill in the gap. There’s policies in place for secular institutions like healthcare and education, so it only seems reasonable to expand those policies to religious institutions.

The fact that it seems no other religious institution has any complaints with this EXCEPT Catholicism really speaks volumes.