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basically religion worked so well that it stopped working. I think they got caught with their pants down due to progress in communications. there was a time th

by exe34 1y ago

basically religion worked so well that it stopped working. I think they got caught with their pants down due to progress in communications. there was a time they could suppress information and get away with it. they didn't realise soon enough that the world had changed. in fact secularism helped give a refuge to the victims - if the highest law of the land was the church, then the old ways would have worked just fine.

somenameforme 1y ago
I don't see how you can reconcile this with their past actions, like the prohibition of marriage or even the appointment of heirs - all as a effort to clamp down on abuses. This is what I was getting at with their historical actions prohibiting marriage. Imagine you live in a time where marriage was completely legal for those within the Church and then, as a punishment, they completely forbade it as well as the designation of heirs. That degree of extremism, in pursuit of a moral goal, is completely unimaginable in modern times - in most of any context. It'd be like combating corruption by requiring politicians give away all belongings when entering office and prohibit them from monetizing their time in office after leaving. That's just inconvenient, so it'd never happen. In any case I suppose now we're looping back around to the original point that we started bickering on. I think the problem is that society has become broadly more amoral, including religious leaders. If one cannot lead by example, then one cannot lead. I think this is the exact same reason that government systems are also failing. It'll be interesting to see where and what this culminates in, as I expect it will happen without our lifetimes. As for the Church, it was (and remains) never too late to pull a Hollywood. Hollywood had been making not entirely subtle jokes about Ratner, Weinstein, and all of these other guys for decades. Everybody in Hollywood knew they were sex abusers, but it's only when it became clear that they were beyond the point of no return that Hollywood was like 'oh my gosh, that's just so unacceptable, I can't believe you'd do that, away with thee.' But of course doing that would be inconvenient, so again - it'd never happen, certainly not with the current leadership nor cardinals that elected them.

by exe34 1y ago

somenameforme 1y ago

I don't see how you can reconcile this with their past actions, like the prohibition of marriage or even the appointment of heirs - all as a effort to clamp down on abuses. This is what I was getting at with their historical actions prohibiting marriage. Imagine you live in a time where marriage was completely legal for those within the Church and then, as a punishment, they completely forbade it as well as the designation of heirs. That degree of extremism, in pursuit of a moral goal, is completely unimaginable in modern times - in most of any context. It'd be like combating corruption by requiring politicians give away all belongings when entering office and prohibit them from monetizing their time in office after leaving. That's just inconvenient, so it'd never happen. In any case I suppose now we're looping back around to the original point that we started bickering on. I think the problem is that society has become broadly more amoral, including religious leaders. If one cannot lead by example, then one cannot lead. I think this is the exact same reason that government systems are also failing. It'll be interesting to see where and what this culminates in, as I expect it will happen without our lifetimes. As for the Church, it was (and remains) never too late to pull a Hollywood. Hollywood had been making not entirely subtle jokes about Ratner, Weinstein, and all of these other guys for decades. Everybody in Hollywood knew they were sex abusers, but it's only when it became clear that they were beyond the point of no return that Hollywood was like 'oh my gosh, that's just so unacceptable, I can't believe you'd do that, away with thee.' But of course doing that would be inconvenient, so again - it'd never happen, certainly not with the current leadership nor cardinals that elected them.