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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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I. Inquisition, Crusades, and “Dark Ages”
II. The Sexual Scandal in the Catholic Church
III. Sinners in the Church
IV. Paganism, Slavery, & Other Real or Imagined Scandals (like Halloween)
V. The Galileo Controversy
VI. Pope Pius XII and the Nazi Holocaust / Persecution of Jews / Anti-Semitism
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I. Inquisition, Crusades, and “Dark Ages”
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EXTERNAL LINKS
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II. The Sexual Scandal in the Catholic Church
My statement: I would remind Catholics (and non-Catholic Christian allies) who are despairing over this dreadful scandal to recall that all great reform movements in the Catholic Church followed times of great immorality within its ranks (we Catholics being sinners and in constant need of God’s grace, mercy, and help, along with everyone else). The terrible revelations now being exposed can potentially be a huge wake-up call to reform seminaries, Catholic educational institutions, and the priesthood from the inroads of theological modernism, false psychological thinking, “political correctness,” heterodox, compromised teaching on sexuality, and relativist, non-traditional ethics and morality in general.
Those scourges are the ultimate and long-term cause of these tragic events, and no informed Catholic that I know has ever denied that the Church (i.e., with regard to the beliefs and behavior of many of its members, not in its teachings) is suffering from a modernist crisis. I would note in passing that the fashionable, wrongheaded, agenda-driven calls for a married or female clergy have little to do with the current problem, and cannot resolve it, since upwards of 90% of the sexually-abused were teenage males.
The problem obviously is something other than celibacy itself, or Clintonian urges towards heterosexual promiscuity. Having believed for a long time (based on historical hindsight) that spiritual and ecclesiological revival is coming in the 21st century, I think this unutterably tragic scandal can and will – by God’s grace and mass repentance — eventually be instrumental in leading to a great movement for reform, orthodoxy, and revival (Romans 8:28). The laity will likely play a large part in the coming revival, as they often have in the past.
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LEAVING (OR WANTING TO LEAVE) THE CHURCH DUE TO SEXUAL AND OTHER SINS AMONG THE CLERGY
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EXTERNAL LINKS
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The Myth of Pedophile Priests (Fr. Dwight Longenecker, 22 March 2010)
“The Myth of the Pedophile Priest”: A Researcher Puts Scandals in Context (Philip Jenkins, 3 March 2002)
The Sex-Abuse Crisis: What are Christians Doing About It? (David Manthei, 1 Dec. 2014)
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“Sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests” (U. S. Dept. of Education study)
The Root Cause of the Catholic Sex-Abuse Scandal (Dr. Michael Liccione, Mind & Spirit, five-part analysis, 2-18-19)
Benedict XVI essay: “The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse” (Catholic News Agency, 4-10-19)
“Serbia Rocked by Orthodox Church Sex Scandal” [article, + Facebook discussion on the general issue, 4-29-13]
For why do they sit at the gate, and what do they watch for, if it be not for this, that so soon as any bishop or clergyman or monk or nun has fallen, they may have ground for believing, and boasting, and maintaining that all are the same as the one that has fallen, but that all cannot be convicted and unmasked? Yet these very men do not straightway cast forth their wives, or bring accusation against their mothers, if some married woman has been discovered to be an adulteress. But the moment that any crime is either falsely alleged or actually proved against any one who makes a profession of piety, these men are incessant and unwearied in their efforts to make this charge be believed against all religious men. (St. Augustine: Epistle 78 [6]: to the Church at Hippo [404 A.D.] )
III. Sinners in the Church
Thomas Howard on the Sins of the Catholic Church [Facebook, 1991]
Sins and Sinners in the Catholic Church [1998]
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IV. Paganism, Slavery, & Other Real or Imagined Scandals (like Halloween)
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EXTERNAL LINKS
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V. The Galileo Controversy
[See: Philosophy, Science, and Christianity Page]
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VI. Pope Pius XII and the Nazi Holocaust / Persecution of Jews / Anti-Semitism
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Last updated on 19 January 2024
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Photo credit: photograph by LunarSeaArt (2-26-17) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]
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