I'm referring to TMK in particular, Bruno, though I think the comments of more than a few others show a willingness to use this horrific institutional failure and the epidemic of child-rape as the basis for an opportunistic critique of organised religion, and one organised religion in particular.

How do I get from the thread title to "insincere concern"? Seriously?

It's a clearly glib and facetious remark, which isn't concerned in the slightest with the crimes themselves, only with their repercussions for one individual TMK marks out as an enemy. It's an opportunistic use of an epidemic tragedy to score points against Ratzinger.

It's the sort of comment that would be more appropriate were the Pope caught skimming collection plates, and it's clear that the author doesn't really care about the nature of the crime as long as it embarasses the papcy. I think it's fucking nauseating.

I dunno.

But if this isn't a great opportunity for criticizing me some organized religion, I don't know what would be. It's the 'organized' part that was so instrumental in and conducive to sustaining these atrocities, it seems to me.

Anyway, Kubelgog's choice of threa title aside, he's been convincing enough to me in his sincere outrage at what's happened in Ireland.

Exactly. The title of the thread is the least significant thing about it. TMK's posts have made excellent, harrowing reading. Ad hominem attacks in his direction give the impression of trying to divert attention from the matter at hand.

I long ago ceased giving a flying fuck about your impression of me, Purves. I also don't think "ad hominem" means what you think it means.

Bruno - that's fine, YMMV.

It's funny, I'd have said that "and it's clear that the author doesn't really care about the nature of the crime as long as it embarasses the papcy" would be comfortably characterised as ad hominem, but I'm sure you know best.

So it would seem.

(Hint; if you can find where I've disputed a factual claim, do please let me know)

Toro, your criticism of TMK reminds me rather of the Dawkins comment on some critics of the Selfish Gene: "they criticised me on the basis of the title without reading the rather large footnote that is the book itself".

And surely "horrific institutional failure and an epidemic of child-rape" is a fairly sound - and not at all opportunistic - basis on which to begin a critique of organised religion.

Hof - if I was criticising just the thread title, let alone just the comments of one poster on this thread, or his comments on just one thread, that would be fair enough - but I amn't, and it isn't. That's merely the most egregious example.

As to your second para, the very same remark could be made of Irish swimming, yet I don't see anybody using it as a basis for criticising organised sport.

I think you're floundering a bit here, Toro. You may not have disputed any factual claims, but you've as good as implied that the guy making factual claims is so obviously insincere that you don't need to dispute them. If that's not ad hominem it's a Rizla paper away from it.

As for the rest of us, it's true that a lot of us dislike churches, and yours in particular, and have done for a while. Does this mean we should refrain from comment? After all, what the church has been found to be doing here, while it's far worse than we used to think, is qualitatively just as we used to think: it's been being secretive, paranoid, authoritarian, self-interested and hypocritical.

[Edit: by the church I mean the institution, rather than the mass of believers, most of whom are of course at least as nice as anyone else.]

And tactically, I don't think in any case that you should slag off Purves for not knowing what "ad hominem" means for as long as you're this confused about what "leavened" means.

Toro: Count On It wrote:

As to your second para, the very same remark could be made of Irish swimming, yet I don't see anybody using it as a basis for criticising organised sport.

Are you really trying to equate in any way the actions of the Catholic Church - probably the most powerful social force in Ireland for the first half of this century - with those of Swim Ireland?

Do you really think this or are you just arguing for the sake of it?

As to your second para, the very same remark could be made of Irish swimming, yet I don't see anybody using it as a basis for criticising organised sport.

what the fuck? senior swimming officials did not cover up for paedophile swimming coaches, moving them from club to club so their crimes wouldn't be made public. the IASA did not run prison camps where tens of thousands of children were interned as captive sex slaves. neither did the IASA try to control everyone's life and dictate to the people on issues of morality.

Toro, you need to do more work on the equivalence of Swim Ireland and the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Guys, Toro isn't comparing the failures of the Irish Catholic Church to the failures of Swim Ireland (whatever the fuck that is); he's saying the specific failures in question of neither institution should constitute legitimate grounds for calling into question the moral validity (for lack of a better term - justification, advisability, etc) of having organized religion (or a universal Catholic Church) or organized swimming. Or at least I think that's what he was saying.

I don't know about the swimming angle, but I think there's a ripe case on the religion angle, at least as far as the RCC goes, or the Irish church at very least. If they hadn't already managed to delegitimize themselves with the enormities of less enlightened times, they ought to have done so by now. How you unshit the bed Kubelgog was describing, I have no idea.

Well, I suppose you just wait out a generation or so and let everyone involved slowly die out, for starters.

Fucking phone, time #3 trying to post this. I'll respond to Wyatt when opportunity and sobriety coincide, which may be tomorrow, but may be Tuesday. Meantime, Bruno can speak for me regarding that analogy.

Sixth time lucky...

This will be new to some of you, but most of you I expect to remember this. Of the people on this board, I was an altar boy for one of Ireland's most notorious paedophiles. Moreover, as a philosopher, I deal daily with people who were and are professional colleagues of the exact cunt of a cardinal who moved him from parish to parish as the allegations mounted. So please do not *anybody* imagine for a second that I am taking this lightly.

I do not challenge, nor do I expect to be dismissed a single one of the facts that TMK and others have raised on this thread. I simply think that he's bing the worst kind of fucking concern troll over it and, while he's probably my best mate in the world, I find his attitude towards this and - especially - the Sinn Féin/ Adams family child abuse incidents fucking loathesome.

If anybody, anybody, thinks I thereby support the existing church hierarchy or the leadership of Sinn Féin, they have another thing coming.

There are lots of cunts are happy to posture over these issues, and turn them to immediate political gain. I think that's beneath fucking contempt, me.

er... i don't think "concern troll" means what you think it means toro. TMK would be a concern troll if he masqueraded as a supporter of pope benedict while subtly riffing on the oskar schindler-like benevolence benny extended to the local child rapists. as far as i know TMK is and always has been anti-RCC and all his posts on this thread reflect that.

are you suggesting that TMK is pretending to be "concerned" about child rape when in fact his real aim is to be a "troll", who writes deliberately provocative stuff about the RCC with no higher purpose in mind than annoying you? if so, that's outrageous. i hope you don't go around accusing every anti-catholic person you meet of the same thing, considering what many of them have likely been through.

No, garcia. As I thought I made plain, I think he's willing - and has repeatedly shown himself so - to ride a whole lot of animus towards Sinn Féin and the RCC through on the back of largely insincere concern for the victims. He doesn't care - or cares only secondarily - about children being raped, he cares that the aftermath is humiliating for
Gerry Adams, or Ratzinger, or whoever it happens to be this time. His "Sinn Féin should do X" or "the Catholic church should do Y" schtick is wholly disingenuous, because his recommendations for them are not the slightest bit sincere. And this is what "concern trolling" is.

so to me it boils down to what extent a person in a hierarchy is responsible for the actions of those under his (I will say his not his/her as this is the Catholic Church we are talking about...) authority.

A very great extent in many cases. For example if an employee under a my guidance does something that causes a workplace injury or death then I could easily face criminal charges.

When managers create an environment in which the "punishment" for such horrendous actions as child abuse is to be shifted from one place to another, then there seems to me to be no escaping the culpability that goes along with the inevitable establishment of a culture where such offences are viewed as minor.

One of the reasons religious bodies get away with this sort of thing is that discussion of horrendous conduct at all levels, whether the intial act or the subsequent inaction and dreadful treatment of the victims, can be painted as an attack on the church itself.

It's not, it's about a culture of abuse, cover-up, denial and victimisation of the sufferers.

It is about an organisation which knows about dreadful crimes and still puts it own interests ahead of those who have suffered and in doing so puts itself above the law.

This is completely unacceptable in any organisation, religious or otherwise. Until the people who allowed and endorsed this process take personal responsibility then all other proclamations of regret are meaningless.

Saying sorry but paying no personal price is a continuation of the very same process applied to child molesting priests.