Tags
(not satire – it’s the Church of England!)
The Diocese of Chichester has just published a detailed report on child abuse which was commissioned by the former Bishop of Chichester, the Right Reverend Dr John Hind.
To its author’s credit, the report unflinchingly criticises the way child abuse allegations were handled by senior members of the church.
The only problem is – the report was actually completed way back in 2004.
Which means the diocese has withheld its publication for a full 10 years:
Even worse, all of the identities of the people involved in the abuse have been anonymised – including those people who were convicted of child abuse offences.
If this is the Church of England’s idea of openness when it comes to allegations of child abuse – then God help us all.
.
Related articles by Tom Pride:
8 powerful reasons why Butler-Sloss cannot head the VIP child abuse inquiry
Awkward. Butler-Sloss once said leaders have “sovereign” right to immunity and anonymity
Head of paedophile inquiry’s own brother accused of protecting VIP paedophiles
Meet the man Leon Brittan handed the lost VIP paedophile dossier to
Google searches for ‘Leon Brittan’ and ‘PIE’ censored after Cease and Desist notice
How MI5 vetted Savile. And decided paedophilia was nothing to worry about.
High level child abuse cover-up? Why has Theresa May barred a US journalist from the UK?
The truth about the Tory Party’s cover up of its links to paedophilia
Cock-up, cover-up or conspiracy in the North Wales child abuse scandal? You decide.
Child abuse scandal can of worms – just who is Daily Mail reporter David Rose?
Jimmy Savile, West Yorkshire Police and the Friday Morning Club
.
Please feel free to comment.
If you click on any of these buttons below, you can share this article with other people. Thanks:
Pride's Purge 
Reblogged this on Vox Political and commented:
What – and I use the following words in their traditional, religious sense – the Hell?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on amnesiaclinic and commented:
Pathetic – and I bet they thought they were being so courageous!
LikeLike
Wtf! Well I really shouldn’t be surprised – its a church, a religion, a cover up!
LikeLike
Seems pretty clear to me.
If you want to protect our children, steer clear of the church!
Despite recently published Political Rhetoric, that we are a “Christian Nation” .
The message is clear, Christian by subscription,
Morals by choice.
Belief is not the same as behavior and importantly, Christian values, once again are proving worthless.
Whilst the church invests its wealth in Wonga.com, we are fooled to believe faith schools are the best choice for our children.
By association, perhaps not.
Seems the Church already has its fair share of wrong uns’.
Beware!
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
St. Paul states that ministers and those who teach Christianity should have higher morals, because ‘we will be judged with greater strictness’. Horrifically, too many in the clergy throughout the churches have not taken heed of that bit of scripture. This is literally a case of too little, too late. The churches desperately need to win back public confidence, and that will mean a new broom scouring them of the paedophiles and being seen to do so fearlessly.
LikeLike
If somebody seriously thinks that an omnipotent and moral god talks personally to them inside their head, and to be forgiven for anything they’ve ever done all they have to do is ask nicely, then what the fuck do you think will be the result?
LikeLike
Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & THE SIEGE OF BRITAIN POLITICAL JOURNAL.
LikeLike
Pingback: C of E publishes critical child abuse report - ...
Not necessarily that, Finkfurst, You see the point here is ‘omnipotent and moral God’, as you say. In Christianity there is a set of objective moral values, that still be must be adhered to. God’s forgiveness, freely granted, does not relieve you of the obligation to behave morally. For Protestants, salvation comes from faith, but it must be a good faith, and show itself in good works. For Roman Catholics, there’s the doctrine of ‘co-operative grace’, which means that you are partly saved through good works. Either way, whether you’re Roman Catholic or Protestant, you still have to lead a good, moral life. God’s forgiveness does not give you licence to sin.
I also don’t believe that religion, rather than simple human psychology and the type of group mentality common to secular as well as religious organisations and institutions explains these offences. Paedophiles also exist in purely secular organisations, like parliament, the education system and just about anywhere else they can prey on children. And as we’ve seen with political cover-ups, people in authority will automatically try to deny terrible offences like this in order to protect their own. The church here certainly isn’t unique. Far from it.
LikeLike
beastrabban – Before trying to discuss this any further (and I would be very interested to do so) it would be helpful to know whether you believe this omnipotent and moral god also talks to you inside your head, or are you arguing those religious points in abstract?
As a starting point – I agree with you that people ‘of religion’ are not intrinsically less moral than others, and that wasn’t my point, but they almost universally claim to be more so.
LikeLike
Thanks for the reply, Finkfurst. I’m glad we both agree that religious people aren’t more inclined towards child abuse than secular men and women.
In answer to your question, yes, I am a Christian, and I do pray. However, I don’t believe that God talks to me inside my head, or at least, not in the sense that the schizophrenic hears voices and has visions. I do believe that God guides people’s actions, but that usually people aren’t conscious of this. It’s most a case of someone happening to do the right thing at the right time. An example would be someone suddenly calling in on someone they haven’t seen for a little while, at just the right time to help them with a problem or an issue, without knowing they needed help first. And I dare say you could look at the complex web of events and experiences in most people’s lives, and concur that incidents like that are easily explained as coincidence and the operation of the human memory and psychology in making these coincidences seem rarer or more important than they really are.
As for actually hearing voices and seeing visions, that’s mysticism. It’s part of Christian religious tradition, but since the early Church there have been rules about it. Until recently it was discouraged within Protestantism. If you go back to St. Paul, he tells you to question every spirit, for not every spirit is from God. There’s always been a belief that some forms of religious experience are false. The explanations range from demonic possession, through to psychological aberration. Even during the witch trials of the Middle Ages and 16th and 17th centuries, some of those accused as witches were released because after examination it was concluded that they were mad, rather than genuinely in league with the powers of darkness. One of the recent interpretations of the decline in witch trials in the 17th and 18th centuries is that society still strongly believed in the existence of witches, but that they were also aware of scientific, rational explanations and so supernatural intervention became harder to prove.
The Vatican also has a bureaucratic procedure dealing with authenticity of miracles. Before a person can be canonised, the reports of their miracles are carefully scrutinised and rejected if there is a reasonable, naturalistic explanation for them. The rules governing their investigation have been around since the 18th century. By and large personal mystical experience, like visions and voices was discouraged and frowned upon in the mainstream churches from the 18th through the 19th centuries and into much of the twentieth. They re-appeared in the 18th century with the Methodist and Pentecostalist revival, but the established Church distrusted them as ‘enthusiasm’, which at that time meant something like ‘religious fanaticism’. They’ve only really become a part of mainstream Christian religious practice again since the Charismatic revival of the 1960s, and even now many older Christians distrust them.
My point here is that, if someone claimed that they were told by God that it was acceptable to commit an offence, like theft or adultery, let alone preying on children, it wouldn’t be accepted. Fundamentalists would conclude that they’d been led astray by the Devil, while rationalists would believe that they were either mentally disturbed, or that they as well as being criminals they were also liars trying to excuse their crimes by appealing to people’s religious beliefs, while themselves knowing full well that religious belief had nothing to do with their crimes.
I am also very much aware that there have been cult leaders, who have founded highly manipulative and personally destructive religious movements, and claimed justification for them through personal revelation and religious inspiration. However, these organisations were well outside mainstream Christianity.
There’s also a general problem in that some child abusers, as well as other sex criminals, will develop philosophical rationales to justify their crimes. You can see a secular example of that in the fiction of the Marquis De Sade. It doesn’t mean that religion or philosophy as a whole leads to or justifies child abuse.
LikeLike
beastrabban – The problem is that if I ask you why you think something, and you essentially say that your thoughts are not entirely your own, then rational discussion becomes extremely difficult, so I prefer to know that beforehand.
You say that your god guides your actions, but of course all our conscious actions are a result of our thoughts. I’m genuinely not trying to imply that you’re schizophrenic, but when you pray, or at other times, do you get thoughts which you believe come from somewhere other than your own brain? If so, can you differentiate which are your own thoughts and which are not?
By the way, there’s no need to waste your time writing about the history or practices of any religions, because I either already know it or I can easily look it up.
LikeLike
i want to suck you off.
LikeLike
Tom …and the only person you’ve ordered to STFU in your ‘free speech’ zone is me? Would you care to justify your judgement?
LikeLike
Pingback: C of E publishes critical child abuse report - ...
beastrabban – Your previous replies have been prompt and frank, and I appreciate that. I hope that’s not where it ends……
LikeLike
Nah, it’s just there were one or two things I wanted to do this afternoon. In answer to your question, I don’t get thoughts that come into my mind from elsewhere, and I’d actually be worried if I did, because that is a symptom of schizophrenia. From what I’ve read, and this is very much the opinion of a layman, one explanation of inner voices is that they actually come from the hearer’s own psyche, but either because of physical trauma or their psychology, the hearer is unable to accept them as their own and so they appear to come from outside.
LikeLike
So how does your god guide your actions without guiding your thoughts?
LikeLike
The Pope has said that 1 in 50 priests have been proven to be paedophiles, which of course means the real figure is far higher than that. Why are there so many paedophiles in the Catholic church? Are other religions the same?
LikeLike
Pingback: EXCLUSIVE: Shock as Jimmy Savile revealed to have been a northerner | Pride's Purge
beastrabban – The usual story! Religious people are unwilling or unable to answer whenever they are asked anything difficult about their religion, whilst atheists have no problem whatsoever with questions. Go on… ask me anything you want! What does that say about integrity? Would you like to prove me wrong by actually discussing your religion?
LikeLike
Actually, no, Finkfurst. As I said, there are other things I want to do as well. Now I did not say that God didn’t guide my actions, nor did I say that God did not guide my thoughts. I simply said that they didn’t come from outside myself. The point is that in Christianity, God is both immanent and transcendent, both within the universe, guiding our actions and outside. To go back to St. Paul again, he is the basis in which we move, speak and have our being. I don’t need to hear voices or have visions to feel that God guides my actions, in the same way that He is control of the other forces within the universe, and has been since the beginning of time. If you want a suitable quote illustrating this from Islam, there’s the quote from the Qu’ran ‘I am closer to you than the vein in your neck’. God can prompt me from deep within myself. He doesn’t need to send me visions or auditory messages.
Now I’d like to ask you a question: is this a sincere request for information, to understand how religious people actually think and behave, or is it another attempt to promote a ‘socratic dialogue’, as I’ve heard various atheists call it, in order try to deconvert me?
LikeLike
Yes, this a sincere request for your thoughts in order to (as you correctly say) try to understand how religious people actually think and feel. As an atheist I have absolutely no understanding of that… and I assure you that I have no interest whatsoever in trying to convert you to atheism. However, I wish the reverse was true, because I get VERY fed up with people ringing my doorbell trying to convert me when I’m trying to do some work!
I’m not sure if you might have mixed up some negatives in your answer. That aside, you seem to be a little evasive, so I’ll try once again with a clearer question – Do you think your god guides your thoughts?
P.S. You really are wasting your time quoting St. Paul, the Qu’ran, or anything else, so you shouldn’t bother any more, because I will ignore it. I’m only interested in what you think.
LikeLike
P.S. Saying “God is both immanent and transcendent” doesn’t mean anything, because immanence and/or transcendence are of course the point of the question, so I hope you’re able to answer it without evasion this time.
LikeLike
beastrabban – I’ll try asking once again in the spirit of trying to understand another human being… Do you think your god guides your thoughts?
LikeLike