Catholic Bishop backs campaign to legalise Brothels!

[Quarterpoundher]

Not a problem at all.

Yes, it is true to say that the church handled things badly but to be honest that is a different point to what I am making.

I am essentially challenging the view that all priests are dangerous with paedophile tendencies. I had a fair bit orf experience of priests in my youth as I served mass and I would have met a lot of priests and got many a lift home from things with them. Not once -and I am talking about maybe 20 priests I would have encountered at different stages - did I ever see even the remotest hint of impropriety among any of them.

That is not to trivialise or dismiss in any way some of the horrors that did take place but - and I have no contact with or axe to grind on behalf of priests these days - it is only fair to put that experience on the record. That's all I am doing.

Some of the stuff written about priests here has been lazy populist fabrication and it is always good that such things are challenged.

Take care, M.

I agree with every word of that Mucker, well said.

You can’t pigeon hole any section of society as being all one thing and nothing else, that s absolute madness to do that and very unjust. I hope my post didn’t infer that, I didn’t mean it to.

I was an alter boy myself once (literally once) I got drafted in to replace someone for a funeral, and hadn’t a clue what to do, no one told me what I was supposed to do, I just kept an crafty eye on the fella opposite, that was grand until he went for that thing with the smoke coming out it, (still don’t know what it’s called) and I followed him thinking all four of us where supposed to grab it, we had a bit of a scuffle over it (he was very protective of it god love em’) alongside the coffin and in front of the whole congregation, the family weren’t best pleased, but the crowd got a laugh, needless to say, I wasn’t asked back.

But that priest was the soundest fella you could ever meet, he did his job, tended his flock but left dogma at the door, he could and did drink anyone in the parish under the table, he was a force of nature, brilliant man, but the same cannot be said for the gobs**it that replaced him, a total zealot. I don’t have any agenda towards the Church, just not a lot of time for how they do things.

BR…QPH…

[punterminator]

1) True, and that's probably why "statistically" a lot more fathers than priests have been shown to be paedophiles. My argument does indeed "statistically" hold water for the very simply reason that what I said is true.

Eh, no, that's not statistics. If 1000 people a day drive a car of which 10 die and 10 people a day fly a plane of which 2 die - well, more people die driving a car, however "statistically" you are more likely to die flying a plane.

2) Frankly I couldn't care less about Padre Pio - I simply questioned a claim that he shot himself through the hand during post office robberies. But I would love to know your source for the "well known fact" that his wounds were self inflicted. I have no information either way but it seems strange that the church is now making an exhibition of him if they have come to realise he was a fraud. So your source would be interesting.

Ah come on, seriously now. It's not 1920 anymore, tell me which is more believable that he created the wounds himself or that some supernatural creature did it to him?? As for my source, well there was a book written on it last year by some Italian researcher using Vatican Records which pretty much proved the case. It also had interviews in it with a local village girl and a pharmacist who were secretly supplying him with carbolic acid.
As for the church, well for a start they banned him from saying mass and ever since a succession of Popes have distanced themselves from him.

[Mucker]

1) Eh, no, that's not statistics. If 1000 people a day drive a car of which 10 die and 10 people a day fly a plane of which 2 die - well, more people die driving a car, however "statistically" you are more likely to die flying a plane.

2) Ah come on, seriously now. It's not 1920 anymore, tell me which is more believable that he created the wounds himself or that some supernatural creature did it to him?? As for my source, well there was a book written on it last year by some Italian researcher using Vatican Records which pretty much proved the case. It also had interviews in it with a local village girl and a pharmacist who were secretly supplying him with carbolic acid.
As for the church, well for a start they banned him from saying mass and ever since a succession of Popes have distanced themselves from him.

1) You are talking about probability which is a different thing to what I am at. I am simply relating facts. In the example you gave it is still true to say that more people died driving cars. Attempts to mitigate the facts with probability does not change the remarkable lop-sidedness of media reporting on clerical and no-clerical abuse.

2) Please spare me the "we're all enlightened now and you are not allowed to challenge the 'educated sceptic' view" angle and just deal with the facts as we know them. It is a fact that the Pope canonised Padre Pio in 2002, a reality which seems directly at odds with your claim that "a succession of Popes have distanced themselves from him".

Your views seem terribly vague. It seems likely that you read some newspaper account of that book rather than the book itself. "Some Italian researcher" could be anyone with any kind of an agenda.

I read an account of this allegation in the Daily Telegraph once and it was an account by a pharmacist who gave him four grams of carbolic acid once in 1919. This seems a good line with which to sell a book but it hardly amounts to compelling evidence. He apparently displayed the stigmata for over half a century from 1911 on. Where did he source carbolic acid from the rest of the time?

I am not saying he did not fake the stigmata - how could I possibly know that? What I am saying is that you are citing evidence that has been examined and dismissed. Buying a rope doesn't make you a hangman.