Awful story.

Personally, I'm relieved for once that the perp does not have an Irish surname.
And that it didn't happen at Notre Dame.

True, but don't feel too much better, because something similar probably happened there too anyway.

Watched this video so many times that it made me like brotstep. Wtf.

practicing Catholics expressing outrage at Penn State while saying it's different than continuing their association with the Church go right on the fucking list

So everyone should discontinue “their associations with” – i.e. stop attending, stop funding, and therefore close, Penn State - along with the countless other educational institutions - grammar, middle, high - at which children have been, are now, and will continue to be molested? Because the fact is that institutions of education must regrettably be staffed by human adults, and some percentage of human adults are, regrettably, paedophiles or attracted to underage minors. It is not surprising that such careers attract such adults, and that therefore such things happen in every institution at which adults supervise children in a close and/or private setting. Nor is it surprising that people in power over such institutions cover up such scandals and crimes.

That is generally what scandalous criminals do.

Anyway, the correct course of action in your opinion (when an institution at which children or minors have been sexually abused is found, or found to have covered up rather than reported their own crimes) is not to merely try in court, punish, condemn and shun the wrongdoers, it is to condemn, shun and close down the institution as a whole? All the schools and churches and boy scout troops and orphanages and colleges at which sex abuse occured. If grammar school X is found to have harbored a molesting teacher, and after that teacher is put in jail some parent lobbies for more money for school X (or, presumably, professes an enthusiasm for education), that parent - why, he's just as bad as a child molester. Or a Catholic!

(Incidentally, it is nice to see your intolerance, at least, is growing more traditional. Anti-Catholicism is OLD school - the bread and butter of the early Klan, before they sold out)

A few years ago the Associated Press's "seven-month investigation [into teacher sex abuse -M.E.F.]found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct." They found that "most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action... and no one—not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments—has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms."

That sounds depressively familiar. Roughly 1800 of those cases were due to minor sex abuse. Over a five year period. Contrast that with the 5000 or so priests found to have committed sex abuse over a 50 year period, and it becomes clear that if condemning child sex abuse and being a Catholic is hypocritical, condemning child sex abuse and supporting public schools, say, would be even more so. Not just that, but we know from previous discussions that the Catholic sex abuse cases not only discredit the individual abusers and those who aided them, and not only discredit the institution as a whole, they (somehow) discredit the entire body of belief that the institution represents.

Since that has been established, I'm sure we can expect the well known progressive loathing of hypocrisy to compel that lot to condemn and shun and demand the defunding of the hopelessly corrupt educational system in America, being that - despite it's ostensible mission to HELP children - it is peopled by Catholic-style sex maniacs* and leering perverts on the make. And remember - it is PERFECTLY REASONABLE and objective and not distorting at all to focus solely on child molestation as the defining attribute, as the essence, of the American educational system – which we can now and forevermore (again, perfectly reasonably) refer to as a teacher-run nationwide child sex farm.

PS

You Puritans and your sex hang-ups! Man-boy love was indulged in, with relish, in ancient Greece and elsewhere in the pagan world. Whenever will you shed this last, arbitrary remnant of prudish Christian morality? Making sweet love to infants only seems immoral to you because you were raised in a country whose traditional morality arbitrarily makes sex with children – and family members and members of the same gender - taboo. Why should anyone else have to draw the line where yours was arbitrarily drawn for you – and by dead (yick – the past), male (blecch!), white (double-blecch!) Christians (BARF) at that!

* Remember – people who are vociferously anti-muslim are BIGOTS. People who are vociferously anti-Catholic are ENLIGHTENED EGALITARIAN ANTI-RACISTS. The aburdity of this position is self-evident, yet progressives maintain it through a perpetual refusal to apply reason (i.e. ‘debate club nonsense’) to it (or any other position held by themselves rather than their opponents).

Each sentence you just wrote was more ridiculous than the next, and entirely motivated by a reactionary inclination to defend a ridiculous institution because it's something "liberals" generally frown upon, and as such I took not a word seriously.

And what's worse, I don't think you even believed any of it yourself, and were just using it as a logical exercise, which didn't even pan out the way you intended it. No offense though etc etc tight bros.

No worries on that score. I will never take offense.

But I do not know what you mean, that you don't believe I believe what I wrote. I don't, really, believe some of what I wrote, because some was written to demonstrate the faulty reasoning exhibited in the original post. I do believe that the reasoning is faulty, and that its faults become painfully plain when that reasoning is applied indiscriminately rather than opportunistically.

But I do recognize that child sex abuse occurs or has occurred in more or less all institutions in which adults and minors interact. I do believe the numbers found by the AP study. I do understand that if employing sex abusers and such renders an institution untouchable and its body of belief corrupt, then by extension a great percentage of our institutions of learning must be untouchable and corrupt. And I recognize that being anti-Catholic and being anti-Muslim are two forms of intolerance and bigotry – although the former is a left-friendly bigotry and so likely to earn one applause in fashionably-opinioned circles, where as the latter is for the moment very unfashionable in said circles, and likely to earn one boos and hisses. This despite the fact that all the misogyny and homophobia one finds in Catholicism can be found in Islam, only magnified exponentially.

Your premise is faulty, which is why logic games that approach an issue in a vaccuum seem to check out, but don't have real world implications. First off, you're comparing a specific religion to the idea of public education in general, which is a false analogy. Advocating for the abolishment of the catholic church because of their overwhelming, pervasive history of condoning sexual abuse does not mean you then have to come down against the idea of schools in general. In particular, sure, why not. If your institutions is so corrupt that it pushes child sex abuse under the rug, then burn it down and start over.

As for "bigotry" against catholics and muslims, your comparison is faulty again. I don't want to see either eliminated, I just want both of them out of the actual law making of the respective countries where they flourish. Culturally both are gross to me, but who cares, let them do what they want (short of violence, oppression etc)

Wrote this on phone at gym so excuse any errors