I've mentioned before here how I do not trust Churches as an entity because I do not trust in the ability of human beings to handle ministerial power without making egregious errors. Human beings are far too corrupt to be able to adequately represent the interests of an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing God, and Christian theology backs me up on that.Anyway. The Catholic church has a long history of pedophile priests sexually abusing children.
As a disclaimer, I'll note that it's a fairly small number of priests who have done this. However, this abuse, when reported to higher officials, is typically ignored or dismissed as poppycock.
The higher officials have become accomplices to the abuse, simply moving priests around so they can have fresh crops of victims in new places instead of punishing or defrocking them. This kind of abuse of power, especially when it is perpetrated by people claiming to represent a perfect God, is reprehensible.
But it's not just a Catholic problem anymore. No, now the Protestants...specifically the "holier than thou" Southern Baptists...have gotten on board the sex abuse bandwagon.
Apparently, there have been a number...again, small when compared to the total number of pastors, but still too high...of pastors and youth leaders in the Southern Baptist Church who have been sexually abusing, even impregnating in at least one case, children and teens. This is unacceptable.
Where the Catholics at least have a hierarchy and therefore a theoretical way of stopping and disciplining abusers, Baptist churches are decentralized and therefore lack the power structure to discipline corrupt, evil people like these.
Instead of firing the pastors and letting Baptist organizations and publications know about it, the churches in question have simply asked the pastor to move on. "A" for forgiveness, but "F" for common sense.
These men are predatory animals and they need to be hunted down and removed from power.
Everyone makes mistakes, but rampant hypocrisy and abuse like this crosses a lot of lines. They have lost whatever claim to holiness they may once have had, and they had better hope that God is as forgiving as Scripture implies, because otherwise, the fire-and-brimstone God that they so often call on in their sermons is going to damn them to hell for a long, long time.
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Sotto Voce