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

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

> 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.