OK, so I'm wondering if the anti-Catholic, anti-priest, anti-Pope jokes are getting to anyone else? I sure have had my fill. I love to watch the late night television shows, but I am sick and tired of the same old jokes. OK, so some bad stuff happened. Move on. The Catholic Church learned from their mistakes -- of course, there can be no guarantees that there will be no more mistakes. But then, the various other faiths who are not constantly on the hot seat like the Catholic Church is, have had problems too in this area. I would virtually guarantee that they haven't learned from the experiences that our church have been through. I would be very surprised to find that there are no incidents of child molestation in other faiths, or other groups that have a lot of contact with children. They just keep it hidden better.
Do you know how I know? Two of my children were molested as boys-- and guess what-- it wasn't the Catholic Church that was responsible but the Boy Scouts. I think that the numbers of incidents of molestation in both groups are comparable. But there has been no public outcry for change in the Scouting program, or in the Presbyterian Church, or the Jewish faith, etc. I am not against the Scouts, but the outcry that has come against the church is out of proportion to what has happened in other cases. I believe most of the people promoting the scandal are from outside the church-- from the heavily anti-Catholic media and Hollywood.I also believe that this constant stabbing at the Catholic Church is responsible for a lot of the loss of membership that has been experienced over the decades. I may be wrong, but I don't think so. Has anyone ever thought about what an outcry there would be if other faiths were constantly assaulted like the Catholic Church is? I think it's time we as Catholics did something to defend our faith, our priests and our Pope. Anybody have any better ideas than me? So far, the only thing I've come up with is either to boycott programs that consistently slam our church, or to write massive amounts of letters to sponsors of said programs that we are boycotting THEIR products. That makes the most sense to me. I'd love to hear what any one else thinks.
7 comments:
I don't watch late night programs, so I haven't paid attention to the "slams" on the Church. I agree with you that other organizations/religions aren't brought to the forefront when you know that there has been molestation. This was a good post!
Thanks Mary. I was worried about it because it was me on my soap box lol.
I completely agree with you. Here are two articles that I found put the situation into context (without excuses) and helped me to feel a little calmer about it.
http://www.ncregister.com/register_exclusives/change
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/anti-catholicism-again.
Keep calm, and say your rosary!;D
In Christ,
Lucy
www.mysticalrosedesign.blogspot.com
PS--Your stories on the post above are great. Hope you can join us for Kids Say The Darndest Things Fridays!
Thank you so much Lucy- I will try to come in on the Fridays-- problem is, the last few Fridays have been very hectic-- last Friday wasn't as bad but I just totally forgot about Kids Say The Darndest Things Fridays. The Friday before, I got a call from my hubby that he was in the hospital-- I was in Raleigh NC and he was in our home town in Virginia-- four hours away! I ran home and found that he had a bad infection of his leg "Cystitis". The weekend before, I was driving my daughter in law down to Raleigh- she'd visited the previous week (what a lovely DIL she is too-- it was a great week!)The weekend before was Good Friday, and on and on. This week we are going out so this one is out. I hope to participate next Friday!
No outcry against the Boy Scouts?!? You must live in a different place than I do! I'm in Pittsburgh, in the most liberal part of the city, and the Boy Scouts have a really bad reputation here. There are "jokes" aplenty about horny Scoutmasters and much anger about BSA's policy against gay members which of course does nothing to protect boys from perverts who pretend to be straight.
I am so, so sorry that your sons were molested! It really can happen in any group that allows trusted adults to be alone with children, and it is not the fault of the group but of those adults who betrayed the trust.
Oh, I meant to say also that I think focusing your energy on boycotts or angry letter-writing will be less effective than putting energy into doing good things as a Catholic and showing the public the other side of Catholicism.
Very true Becca. I totally agree that doing good things is really the best way to make the rest of the world realize the goodness that the Catholic church contains. In fact, I have never done any of the things I came up with (I was particularly angry when writing that post :-)) such as writing a letter to protest the media coverage or boycotted anything. I do focus my energy on good works, and not so that the hatemongers will notice, either but just because I can help someone to feel a bit better for a few minutes when I visit.
I try not to waste energy feeling angry at the media who never seem to give the vast majority of very good men who are our priests a break, no matter how much good THEY do. I do wish there were a way to highlight the GOOD works that are done by our priests, however.
And I also agree that the Scouts are not to blame. The troop our kids were a member of was led by a very good man who was an excellent role model for his young protegees. Four of my sons had some great times with the scouts (the youngest refused to go move beyond Cub Scouts). I don't actually know how most of them perceive the Boy Scouting program. One of the two sons who were molested has forgiven the man who did it- the other is still very, very angry. I hope that someday all of them will be able to look back and remember the fun times they had, which were many.
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