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> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. What are these misconceptions? Catholicism uses shame to induce conformity

> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. What are these misconceptions? Catholicism uses shame to induce conformity, has had numerous priests abuse children (and protecting the offenders), has a long history of violence against non-adherents, historically deeply homophobic, and so on. All of that is factual. Edit: Oh! And now I remember, they killed and buried hundreds of children in Canada at their "schools" for indigenous people. Graves unmarked, families never knew what happened to the kids. But it's OK! Pope here said sorry, sort of, after being pressured, for decades. Also they found graves. Canadian govt. couldn't give a rats ass because the church is as powerful as governments. But remember! We love all of God's children.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
[flagged]
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  So what if it's not unique to Catholicism? I was asking specifically what the misconceptions are. You've redirected.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > So what if it's not unique to Catholicism? I was asking specifically what the misconceptions are. You've redirected. As someone who left Catholicism for Wicca and then eventually gave up on religion in general, I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism. I would say that in pointing at all those things it has done wrong, you are implicitly saying that that these traits are unusual — but we're all a bunch of monkeys, it's really hard to get us to be nice to each other, and it's really easy for Machiavellian sadists to rise to power in every institution.
    - monkeynotes 3y ago
      > I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism. In what way? Does pointing it out change the facts? Why can't we have a discussion about how Catholicism is objectively hypocritical and not have to discuss all of the other things that are wrong in the world?
      - ben_w 3y ago
        In the specific way I wrote in the very next sentence. You're welcome to point out the flaws and hypocrisies all you like, though I know from my experience as an angry bisexual Wiccan teenager that had to go to a Catholic school and study the bible as part of my education, that it does little good unless you have the goal of looking pompous — especially when the very line you were quoting was > It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. rather than > It makes me immensely sad that people don't realise Catholics are uniquely perfect. The former does not imply perfection, nor even an absence of hypocrisy.
- vkou 3y ago
  > None of that is unique to Catholicism. Correct. Organizations besides the Catholic church also get criticized for that kind of behaviour. (To various degrees, due to public awareness, religious or media or political or national or personal bias, or the fact that nobody outside the West Nowhere Parish in Nowhere cares about a regional, 800-member church scandal.) The Catholic church is a big organization. As in any big organization, there are aspects of it that are good, aspects of it that are OK, and aspects of it that are utterly, irredeemably rotten. And it's up to the church to figure out how to navigate that complexity. Given how hard it's been fighting accountability in this space, even very recently, I can't say they are doing a great job of navigating it, but that's just my opinion.
- dang 3y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar, regardless of which religious group you have a problem with. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
philwelch 3y ago
The rate of child sexual abuse among Catholic priests is lower than that of Protestant pastors, which in turn is even lower than that of public schoolteachers.
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  So what??? If my neighbour murdered children would that be mitigated by a serial killer in the next town over? Do people really have this much cognitive dissonance that they lose the ability to think? Like how much delusion do you have to be under to even say the above and think it makes it better for Catholics. Even one priest raping a child under the protection of the church is entirely unacceptable.
  - ImJamal 3y ago
    Nobody is saying it is acceptable. The problem is every time the Church is brought up somebody has to talk about the abuse/cover up regardless of the topic. It is completely irrelevant to this thread. Nobody does this with public schools. If people always brought up the abuse and cover ups by teachers and unions regardless of the topic they would be down voted and told it is not relevant to the topic. If people actually cared about making abuse and coverups known they would bring it up every thread schools are brought up. Instead they only do it with the Church. It is almost as if they just want to attack the Church and ignore it in their own preferred abusive institutions.
    - monkeynotes 3y ago
      Check the comment this is spawned from. The comment elicited all of this by saying there are misconceptions about the church. I still don't get what the problem is. What does the asymmetric treatment between schools and church abuse have to do with the facts? > If people actually cared about making abuse and coverups known they would bring it up every thread schools are brought up. So you are saying I don't actually care about the abuse coverups? You think I have another agenda? You have a sick mind. > It is almost as if they just want to attack the Church and ignore it in their own preferred abusive institutions. It's not that, at all. Shame on you for trying to reframe it as such.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jimbob45 3y ago
All of that is factual You're sort of singling out Catholicism though. Islam does all those things much much worse than Catholicism ever has - in the present day too! I'm not Catholic and I don't care to defend them. Still, I don't want them singled out when Islam is demonstrably worse in every way.
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  > You're sort of singling out Catholicism though. Yes, because church is the context of this post, and the OP opened the door. What does your comment have to do with the facts?
philwelch 3y ago
[flagged]
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  Citation needed.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
  It is absolutely not a hoax. These graves are well documented.
- semigroupoid 3y ago
  That may be a bit strong. What can be said is that a lot of the initial media outrage regarding the residential schools in the last few years were based on possible gravesites, discovered using ground-penetrating radar. However, multiple excavations have so far been unable to confirm those gravesites at the scales predicted, some of them even turned out to contain no human remains at all [0]. That does not excuse anything, but I find it troubling how many fairly strong claims are made in this thread with zero citations/evidence to back them up. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_gravesites https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
  - MeImCounting 3y ago
    The article linked does not support the thrust of your comment. "In total there are presently 4,126 children within the national student memorial register.[15] Research efforts by the NCTR are ongoing, and this number will increase over time." There are clearly more gravesites than we currently know about. The scale of this atrocity is beyond what was predicted.
    - semigroupoid 3y ago
      I was referring specifically to the media coverage in 2021 and later that presented fairly large numbers (in the hundreds) of possible graves. However, per the article, none of them have been confirmed yet and a number of them even debunked. I am not denying that there are large gravesites or that terrible things happened at those schools.
prefer_to_ask 3y ago
[flagged]
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  Not only nation states and churches. All hierarchical organizations of any kind should be abolished.
s_tec 3y ago
Just because some people do bad things does not mean you get to paint the whole group with those crimes. Imagine if you had said, "Black people are criminals, because a black person robbed the liquor store down the street last week." We all (hopefully) recognize the deep racism in this statement! Unfortunately, there are parts of the country where this type of racism is acceptable and even common. There as similar attitudes towards Catholics, due to America's history as a predominately protestant country. The formula is the same both way - pick a heinous crime from a few members, blame it on the group as a whole, and feel smug about yourself.
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  I'm attacking an institution, not individuals.
dang 3y ago
No religious flamewar on HN please. I realize the parent more or less started it but it's quite against the HN guidelines to take the bait this vigorously. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: yikes, you posted 16 times in this thread! That's egregious. I'm going to assume that you hadn't seen this comment before posting any of those.
- mistermann 3y ago
  A modest proposal: perhaps if you were to teach your userbase why their thinking is objectively incorrect the frequency of these spectacles would decrease over time.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    That this (a comment containing this particular content) is [flagged] is interesting.
  - dang 3y ago
    That's impossible.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      I don't see why. Consider the enlightenment, the rise of science subordinating religion, the fact that humans who have attended school are smarter on average than those who have not, the theory that you scolding people for violating the rules improves behavior, etc. It certainly isn't physically impossible, but I acknowledge that it may be metaphysically impossible.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago

[flagged]

monkeynotes 3y ago
So what if it's not unique to Catholicism? I was asking specifically what the misconceptions are. You've redirected.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > So what if it's not unique to Catholicism? I was asking specifically what the misconceptions are. You've redirected. As someone who left Catholicism for Wicca and then eventually gave up on religion in general, I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism. I would say that in pointing at all those things it has done wrong, you are implicitly saying that that these traits are unusual — but we're all a bunch of monkeys, it's really hard to get us to be nice to each other, and it's really easy for Machiavellian sadists to rise to power in every institution.
  - monkeynotes 3y ago
    > I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism. In what way? Does pointing it out change the facts? Why can't we have a discussion about how Catholicism is objectively hypocritical and not have to discuss all of the other things that are wrong in the world?
    - ben_w 3y ago
      In the specific way I wrote in the very next sentence. You're welcome to point out the flaws and hypocrisies all you like, though I know from my experience as an angry bisexual Wiccan teenager that had to go to a Catholic school and study the bible as part of my education, that it does little good unless you have the goal of looking pompous — especially when the very line you were quoting was > It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. rather than > It makes me immensely sad that people don't realise Catholics are uniquely perfect. The former does not imply perfection, nor even an absence of hypocrisy.
vkou 3y ago
> None of that is unique to Catholicism. Correct. Organizations besides the Catholic church also get criticized for that kind of behaviour. (To various degrees, due to public awareness, religious or media or political or national or personal bias, or the fact that nobody outside the West Nowhere Parish in Nowhere cares about a regional, 800-member church scandal.) The Catholic church is a big organization. As in any big organization, there are aspects of it that are good, aspects of it that are OK, and aspects of it that are utterly, irredeemably rotten. And it's up to the church to figure out how to navigate that complexity. Given how hard it's been fighting accountability in this space, even very recently, I can't say they are doing a great job of navigating it, but that's just my opinion.
dang 3y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar, regardless of which religious group you have a problem with. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

philwelch 3y ago

The rate of child sexual abuse among Catholic priests is lower than that of Protestant pastors, which in turn is even lower than that of public schoolteachers.

monkeynotes 3y ago
So what??? If my neighbour murdered children would that be mitigated by a serial killer in the next town over? Do people really have this much cognitive dissonance that they lose the ability to think? Like how much delusion do you have to be under to even say the above and think it makes it better for Catholics. Even one priest raping a child under the protection of the church is entirely unacceptable.
- ImJamal 3y ago
  Nobody is saying it is acceptable. The problem is every time the Church is brought up somebody has to talk about the abuse/cover up regardless of the topic. It is completely irrelevant to this thread. Nobody does this with public schools. If people always brought up the abuse and cover ups by teachers and unions regardless of the topic they would be down voted and told it is not relevant to the topic. If people actually cared about making abuse and coverups known they would bring it up every thread schools are brought up. Instead they only do it with the Church. It is almost as if they just want to attack the Church and ignore it in their own preferred abusive institutions.
  - monkeynotes 3y ago
    Check the comment this is spawned from. The comment elicited all of this by saying there are misconceptions about the church. I still don't get what the problem is. What does the asymmetric treatment between schools and church abuse have to do with the facts? > If people actually cared about making abuse and coverups known they would bring it up every thread schools are brought up. So you are saying I don't actually care about the abuse coverups? You think I have another agenda? You have a sick mind. > It is almost as if they just want to attack the Church and ignore it in their own preferred abusive institutions. It's not that, at all. Shame on you for trying to reframe it as such.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jimbob45 3y ago

All of that is factual You're sort of singling out Catholicism though. Islam does all those things much much worse than Catholicism ever has - in the present day too! I'm not Catholic and I don't care to defend them. Still, I don't want them singled out when Islam is demonstrably worse in every way.

monkeynotes 3y ago
> You're sort of singling out Catholicism though. Yes, because church is the context of this post, and the OP opened the door. What does your comment have to do with the facts?

philwelch 3y ago

[flagged]

loloquwowndueo 3y ago
Citation needed.
HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
It is absolutely not a hoax. These graves are well documented.
semigroupoid 3y ago
That may be a bit strong. What can be said is that a lot of the initial media outrage regarding the residential schools in the last few years were based on possible gravesites, discovered using ground-penetrating radar. However, multiple excavations have so far been unable to confirm those gravesites at the scales predicted, some of them even turned out to contain no human remains at all [0]. That does not excuse anything, but I find it troubling how many fairly strong claims are made in this thread with zero citations/evidence to back them up. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_gravesites https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
- MeImCounting 3y ago
  The article linked does not support the thrust of your comment. "In total there are presently 4,126 children within the national student memorial register.[15] Research efforts by the NCTR are ongoing, and this number will increase over time." There are clearly more gravesites than we currently know about. The scale of this atrocity is beyond what was predicted.
  - semigroupoid 3y ago
    I was referring specifically to the media coverage in 2021 and later that presented fairly large numbers (in the hundreds) of possible graves. However, per the article, none of them have been confirmed yet and a number of them even debunked. I am not denying that there are large gravesites or that terrible things happened at those schools.

prefer_to_ask 3y ago

[flagged]

TheCoelacanth 3y ago
Not only nation states and churches. All hierarchical organizations of any kind should be abolished.

s_tec 3y ago

Just because some people do bad things does not mean you get to paint the whole group with those crimes. Imagine if you had said, "Black people are criminals, because a black person robbed the liquor store down the street last week." We all (hopefully) recognize the deep racism in this statement! Unfortunately, there are parts of the country where this type of racism is acceptable and even common. There as similar attitudes towards Catholics, due to America's history as a predominately protestant country. The formula is the same both way - pick a heinous crime from a few members, blame it on the group as a whole, and feel smug about yourself.

monkeynotes 3y ago
I'm attacking an institution, not individuals.

dang 3y ago

No religious flamewar on HN please. I realize the parent more or less started it but it's quite against the HN guidelines to take the bait this vigorously. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: yikes, you posted 16 times in this thread! That's egregious. I'm going to assume that you hadn't seen this comment before posting any of those.

mistermann 3y ago
A modest proposal: perhaps if you were to teach your userbase why their thinking is objectively incorrect the frequency of these spectacles would decrease over time.
- mistermann 3y ago
  That this (a comment containing this particular content) is [flagged] is interesting.
- dang 3y ago
  That's impossible.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    I don't see why. Consider the enlightenment, the rise of science subordinating religion, the fact that humans who have attended school are smarter on average than those who have not, the theory that you scolding people for violating the rules improves behavior, etc. It certainly isn't physically impossible, but I acknowledge that it may be metaphysically impossible.