Every sperm is sacred.....unless.....

Robear:

It's a matter of perspective, I suppose. It's not like the Catholic Church goes around encouraging these people to commit crimes. They just prefer to handle the fallout internally, which is really just par for the course for large organizations. You can't make a case for the Church not being especially forthright when other organizations are behaving the same way.

All close organizations cover up crimes when they can, at least as far as I expect. Even universities do that.

I have to broach another issue which often isn't understood by laypeople and for which they have little tolerance. That is confidence and privilege. There are a lot of communiques and communications channels that are protected by privileged confidences. We don't just go around breaking that sort of thing without clear policy.

As an example, I am required NOT to disclose any sort of patient-volunteered information even when that information puts other people around the patient at risk. There are exceptions, but those are exceptions. I imagine that Churches protect confession privileges rather stringently. If you go around ratting out to the fuzz, you're failing your ministry to the worst sinners in the community - those who need to trust you the most.

So, what're you gonna do when a criminal confesses to sexual offense? I honestly don't know how that works.

It's a matter of perspective, I suppose. It's not like the Catholic Church goes around encouraging these people to commit crimes. They just prefer to handle the fallout internally, which is really just par for the course for large organizations. You can't make a case for the Church not being especially forthright when other organizations are behaving the same way.

Most large organizations outside of religions are corporations, and they have a legal responsibility (as do churches) to report crimes, and they do so very frequently, far more often than the Church has done. I've seen it happen myself, for much smaller crimes (and some larger ones) than those that the Church covered up. Most large organizations do *not* routinely cover up serious crimes, or even small ones, and certainly they don't get away with it for decades. "Everyone does it" is not a valid or responsible excuse.

As an example, I am required NOT to disclose any sort of patient-volunteered information even when that information puts other people around the patient at risk. There are exceptions, but those are exceptions. I imagine that Churches protect confession privileges rather stringently. If you go around ratting out to the fuzz, you're failing your ministry to the worst sinners in the community - those who need to trust you the most.

So, what're you gonna do when a criminal confesses to sexual offense? I honestly don't know how that works.

In the US, some medical professionals, such as psychiatrists and psychologists and physicians, have a legal responsibility to report illegal acts uncovered in the course of treatment to the authorities. So medical professionals have an ethical responsibility to the community that priests do not have. A vestige of a time when the authority of the Church was legal as well as moral? Quite possibly, but inappropriate in practice, since a priest making a confession can thus have *prevented* his superiors from taking the issue to the law.

Clearly that did not work out well for the Church, or the the communities it served, because it functioned in a way that permitted serial offenses which were never reported to the police.

As to your question, in the US, the priest would encourage the criminal to go to the police, and he can ask to be relieved of the Seal of the Confessional. He could refer the criminal for excommunication, I suppose, until he did so. But according to Church doctrine, the priest will be automatically excommunicated if he reveals it without permission, even to save his or someone else's life.

Robear:

Most large organizations outside of religions are corporations, and they have a legal responsibility (as do churches) to report crimes, and they do so very frequently, far more often than the Church has done. I've seen it happen myself, for much smaller crimes (and some larger ones) than those that the Church covered up. Most large organizations do *not* routinely cover up serious crimes, or even small ones, and certainly they don't get away with it for decades. "Everyone does it" is not a valid or responsible excuse.

Different environment, I suppose. Where I live, strong political powers can gun down their opponents in broad daylight and we wouldn't hear anything about it. Corporations indulge in outrageous out and out bribery so routinely, you stick out if you don't at least offer a token for the sake of appearing normal.

Given the recent economic meltdown emanating from Wall Street, I have a hard time imagining that any large-scale organizations are any different at the top. Sure, the law applies to no-name cubicle slaves you don't know. That just goes without saying.

It's not so much an excuse as an observation of parity. It doesn't make sense to me to say the Church isn't law-abiding when I observe all manner of law-breaking everywhere. Comparatively speaking, it is.

In the US, some medical professionals, such as psychiatrists and psychologists and physicians, have a legal responsibility to report illegal acts uncovered in the course of treatment to the authorities. So medical professionals have an ethical responsibility to the community that priests do not have. A vestige of a time when the authority of the Church was legal as well as moral? Quite possibly, but inappropriate in practice, since a priest making a confession can thus have *prevented* his superiors from taking the issue to the law.

Clearly that did not work out well for the Church, or the the communities it served, because it functioned in a way that permitted serial offenses which were never reported to the police.

Wow. I get some of the ridiculous policies in the JCI now. This decodes some of that silliness. Dissolving patient-doctor confidentiality in the name of law-enforcement sounds like a colossally bad idea. Police work and maintaining that confidence are in direct conflict. Seems to me like you should just let police handle police work.

Threatening a person with death in order to incriminate himself or herself - I'm not sure I'm on board with that. I can see a lot of things going wrong with that policy in place.

As for the Church offenses, I have said that I don't really know how to handle that. I'm fairly sure denying spiritual aid to the spiritually bereft also sounds like a bad idea. Way worse than what the Church has had to do. I suspect that the Church only gets the kind of data it gets in its clergy because their clergy are highly motivated to report their crimes via confessional before someone finds out outside of it.

Shocking? Yes, for you, I suppose. That said, I have a strong suspicion that that level of sexual abuse just goes on unreported everywhere else, where it's reported with considerably more enthusiasm in-Church, precisely because of the policies in place.

Executives can and do get hauled into court in the US, and go to jail. Not particularly *bad* jails, mind you, but they do. And political parties (in spite of their own fevered ravings) don't gun each other down in the streets.

As for doctors reporting crimes, they will routinely report things like knife and gunshot wounds, women or children coming in with injuries indicating that they might have been beaten, and so forth. If you cut your finger, no one worries. If you should have the misfortune to fall on a knife and put a four inch deep wound in your abdomen, you'd better be prepared to have the police investigating, if there is any reason to doubt your story.

And people do go to jail if their infant dies after a fall, if the prosecutor can convince the jury or judge that they might have struck or shaken the infant somehow. Those cases are well-known and controversial.

LarryC wrote:

As for the Church offenses, I have said that I don't really know how to handle that. I'm fairly sure denying spiritual aid to the spiritually bereft also sounds like a bad idea. Way worse than what the Church has had to do. I suspect that the Church only gets the kind of data it gets in its clergy because their clergy are highly motivated to report their crimes via confessional before someone finds out outside of it.

Except that investigation after investigation shows that not only do the perpetrators usually try to cover it up, but that their superiors actively do so, maintaining secret records in each Bishopric, for example. Consistently we see that most priests do *not* confess their crimes until accusations come out. Not all, but most.

The US has quite a high sensitivity to sex crimes, maybe even more than necessary. Usually, people don't report it because it involves someone they know who the don't want to get in trouble, or because the person involved scares them enough that they decide to wait ten or twenty years to do it. But when they do, the response is quite strong and public.

Robear:

As for doctors reporting crimes, they will routinely report things like knife and gunshot wounds, women or children coming in with injuries indicating that they might have been beaten, and so forth. If you cut your finger, no one worries. If you should have the misfortune to fall on a knife and put a four inch deep wound in your abdomen, you'd better be prepared to have the police investigating, if there is any reason to doubt your story.

And people do go to jail if their infant dies after a fall, if the prosecutor can convince the jury or judge that they might have struck or shaken the infant somehow. Those cases are well-known and controversial.

I hope you can see where the problem with this system is. When MDs are tasked to perform police work, patients will not be forthcoming about events and injuries. So there's a need to "tell a story" to cover up a knife wound. You get bad data and your treatment is compromised.

Beating injuries require no doctor-patient confidence. They require a police rep at the ER to see the obvious injuries, that's all. Less obvious injuries or events become problematic with questionable patient-MD relations. 95% of effective diagnosis depends on reliable history and PE. You can't get those when your patients are continually questioning the validity of your confidence.

Except that investigation after investigation shows that not only do the perpetrators usually try to cover it up, but that their superiors actively do so, maintaining secret records in each Bishopric, for example. Consistently we see that most priests do *not* confess their crimes until accusations come out. Not all, but most.

Confess to the public or to their superiors? If their superiors are covering up the crimes, it stands to reason that they're aware of those incidents. Frankly, I don't understand how a superior can cover up a crime he's not aware of.

The US has quite a high sensitivity to sex crimes, maybe even more than necessary. Usually, people don't report it because it involves someone they know who the don't want to get in trouble, or because the person involved scares them enough that they decide to wait ten or twenty years to do it. But when they do, the response is quite strong and public.

Yeah. You guys have weird sex hang ups. Interesting comparison with Japan.

The Church isn't anti-contraception.

How can you say that with a straight face?

After a statement like that, I don't see how you can be considered credible.

The related statements are fairly important. They usually are. Context supplies meaning. As usual, I must provide my all-too-often repeated disclaimer. My statements speak for themselves and bear corroboration and checking. Who says these things is generally unimportant. My credibility or lack thereof is never a factor, and should never be a factor.

Larry, when you say the Catholic church isn't against contraception, you render yourself non-credible. That's almost like saying they don't believe in Jesus Christ.

There are few things in the world the Catholic Church has fought harder against than contraception, no matter how many people had to die as a consequence. Pro-life, my ass.

They're against certain forms of it, not against others. This has been detailed already in this thread. No need to repeat. Their stances and actions on this as an organization has been quite fairly consistent. You can criticize them on other counts, but not on this one, I think.

LarryC wrote:

They're against certain forms of it, not against others. This has been detailed already in this thread. No need to repeat. Their stances and actions on this as an organization has been quite fairly consistent. You can criticize them on other counts, but not on this one, I think.

They're against any "artificial" form of contraception. The only kind they support is not having sex when pregnancy is possible. That's not contraception though, it's periodic abstinence.

Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family][/url]The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity; it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (the procreative aspect of matrimony), and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses (the unitive aspect of matrimony); it harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God in the transmission of human life.

Edit -

LarryC wrote:

The related statements are fairly important. They usually are. Context supplies meaning. As usual, I must provide my all-too-often repeated disclaimer. My statements speak for themselves and bear corroboration and checking. Who says these things is generally unimportant. My credibility or lack thereof is never a factor, and should never be a factor.

It's interesting to hear that from someone whom has quite recently dismissed arguments on the basis that they came from people he didn't think understood Catholic doctrine instead of the merits of the arguments.

You guys just have different definitions of contraception, that's all.

LarryC's definition seems to be that contraception is "something that prevents a woman from getting pregnant".

Not having sex keeps that from happening, and not having sex during particular times of the month kind of sort of almost keeps that from happening. Therefore it's contraception.

Malor's and pretty much everyone else's definition of contraception is "something that prevents a sexually active woman from getting pregnant".

Having sexual activity using something like the Rhythm Method to "prevent" pregnancy and calling it contraception is akin to handing a blind man a gun, standing in front of him, telling him to shoot, and relying on his blindness to save you, and calling that making you "bulletproof."

NSMike wrote:

Having sexual activity using something like the Rhythm Method to "prevent" pregnancy and calling it contraception is akin to handing a blind man a gun, standing in front of him, telling him to shoot, and relying on his blindness to save you, and calling that making you "bulletproof."

IE, faith

Alright, so contraception appears to be used as a synonym for "birth control," but the word "contraception" invokes "against conception," which is where I was getting my idea about "contraception," limiting it to definable methods of preventing pregnancy through active means. Avoiding sex during specifically fertile periods certainly doesn't feel like "contraception" to me by the strictest definition, even if it is technically "birth control."

Even so, the church's position is that you're only to use these methods to prevent pregnancies from happening too close together. If you're just bangin' for fun, that's a no-go.

I'm happy with sticking with the medical textbook definition. That's what I mean when I said that the Church isn't anti-contraception.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_c...

Same definition in Williams Gynecology, as it lists all the methods for avoiding pregnancy as "contraception" including the ones I've listed that the Catholic Church approves of in Chapter 5 on page 105.

http://contraception.about.com/od/co...

Stengah:

It was my polite way of saying that the arguments presented were fundamentally at odds with what I knew of Catholic life. How else would you respond to an argument that says, "No, gravity doesn't attract things to the ground?"

That is, I'm not dismissing the argument on the grounds that the people are non-credible, but that the arguments themselves are so completely without merit on definition that no argument is necessary to render them invalid. They just contradict the axioms directly.

While defining contraception is fun and all that, I think the point here is that the Catholic Church doesn't believe in the principles it espouses. They didn't do anything illegal, but if your principles only apply when it is not a burden to you, then your principles mean nothing. An unborn child either counts as a child both when abortion or wrongful death are the topic, or the Church is being hypocritical. That's it. People are saying that the Church's stance is hypocritical, and with members of that Church (granted, some are American, if the difference matters) are trying to take away rights based on this hypocritical stance. That is why it matters to a lot of us, not because we want to point and laugh at the hypocritical church.

Atras wrote:

While defining contraception is fun and all that,

"I'm CheezePavilion, and this is my favorite thread on the Forum"

I understand that the objection was based on provisions in the ACA. They're just trying not to pay for it. No rights are being infringed upon. Being that I am not an authority on Catholic matters, I'm asking a priest friend of mine about this and whether the defense is acceptable to Catholic doctrine. He's actually an American priest, so rest assured that he knows what's going on on the ground.

Let's once again reiterate. The defense was used by the legal team hired by a Catholic-affiliated hospital. I am not aware that they consulted the Pope before mounting this defense. They were not saying that the twins were not persons, only that the state didn't recognize them as persons.

What's said: "They don't have to pay you because they're not legally obligated to."
What's unsaid: "They might be morally obligated to do so, but as their attorneys we aren't here to represent their morals."

Personally I think it reflects badly on the hospital. To say it reflects badly on Catholicism seems more of a stretch unless the lawyers were representing the church itself and not the hospital.

LarryC wrote:

They were not saying that the twins were not persons, only that the state didn't recognize them as persons.

This is not really the point. The point is that counting the twins as persons is the Right Thing To Do. Paying wrongful death money to the grieving father/husband is expensive, but it is the most compassionate thing to do, and it is consistent with the idea that the unborn children are people. The State should not have to say they are people, the Church does.

The Church may say they are people, but the Church doesn't also necessarily say that you have to pay money to people when you cause wrongful death. That's a state provision. For instance, in certain cases when you confess to lying in an agreement that caused people to lose money for your benefit, the state calls that fraud and coerces you to pay up a specific amount of money, and possible assigns you jail time. The Church calls that lying and asks you to say you're sorry.

LarryC wrote:

The Church may say they are people, but the Church doesn't also necessarily say that you have to pay money to people when you cause wrongful death. That's a state provision.

Then the church should get out of the hospital business. (I already think this, even if this case had never happened.)

NSMike:

Whyso? So long as Church-affiliated hospitals adhere to JCI standards and provide Standard of Care, the health of their patients should never be in question more than it is in any other hospital or institution. That's what the state is for.

Atras wrote:

[T]he point here is that the Catholic Church doesn't believe in the principles it espouses. They didn't do anything illegal, but if your principles only apply when it is not a burden to you, then your principles mean nothing. An unborn child either counts as a child both when abortion or wrongful death are the topic, or the Church is being hypocritical. That's it. People are saying that the Church's stance is hypocritical, and with members of that Church (granted, some are American, if the difference matters) are trying to take away rights based on this hypocritical stance. That is why it matters to a lot of us, not because we want to point and laugh at the hypocritical church.

As hilarious as the "I'm a freshman who just discovered Derrida" dance is, this is the crux of the matter, so it bears repeating.

The church doesn't want to conform to our government's standards that require them to offer a baseline of care to everyone equally, as prescribed by our medical rights in the U.S. Nobody's got the nerve to tell them to comply or shut down. It's an enforcement issue. They want their religious rights to trump the rights of the patient. It's not quite that bad yet in the U.S., but they will always want that. We've already seen the results of that in Ireland last year. This also shines an extremely bright light on the hypocrisy here.

NSMike wrote:

The church doesn't want to conform to our government's standards that require them to offer a baseline of care to everyone equally, as prescribed by our medical rights in the U.S. Nobody's got the nerve to tell them to comply or shut down. It's an enforcement issue. They want their religious rights to trump the rights of the patient. It's not quite that bad yet in the U.S., but they will always want that. We've already seen the results of that in Ireland last year. This also shines an extremely bright light on the hypocrisy here.

Shrug. It's what I said to Stengah. You see what you want to see.

I won't claim more intimate knowledge of what going on in hospitals where you are, but if the government isn't enforcing standards the way it's supposed to, then it's the government who should be out of business. That's how this particular set of checks and balance works. The church may or may not offer certain services for certain reasons. So will individual X and individual Y, most likely because it pads their bottom lines or offends their sensibilities in some other fashion. It's the government's job to keep all of those in check.

LarryC wrote:
NSMike wrote:

The church doesn't want to conform to our government's standards that require them to offer a baseline of care to everyone equally, as prescribed by our medical rights in the U.S. Nobody's got the nerve to tell them to comply or shut down. It's an enforcement issue. They want their religious rights to trump the rights of the patient. It's not quite that bad yet in the U.S., but they will always want that. We've already seen the results of that in Ireland last year. This also shines an extremely bright light on the hypocrisy here.

Shrug. It's what I said to Stengah. You see what you want to see.

It was bullsh*t then too.

Potayto Potahto. If it's BS, it should simple to show it without having to say "bullsh*t."

This reminds me of the time when I said I was morally against tax fraud, then my accountant found a loophole to exploit and net me extra money back on my tax return even though it violated my moral stance, and I let him do it because it was legally defensible to do so. Then I claimed I was still morally opposed to tax fraud.