Thread: Forgiveness

Originally Posted by mrsquirrel

What I came across was several articles discussing why the priests should be forgiven for their sins.

so here are people saying that even though the priests did something which is inexcusable by modern society that they should be forgiven by followers of christianity.

Where does forgiveness stop then? Does it stop? Are mass murders forgiven?

The entire concept of "forgiveness" is conveniently overdone by the Christians, IMO.

Say for example: I know that I'll be forgiven for whatever I do - before I do it.

This could make some transgress, knowing they'll be automatically forgiven.


As relating to punishment: you can torture, punish, or execute someone for their crimes and still forgive them for it.

Forgiveness is a personal and individual concept. It should not be organizational, as the Xtian church as attempted to make it.

Originally Posted by Milkman

Originally Posted by mrsquirrel

What I came across was several articles discussing why the priests should be forgiven for their sins.

so here are people saying that even though the priests did something which is inexcusable by modern society that they should be forgiven by followers of christianity.

Where does forgiveness stop then? Does it stop? Are mass murders forgiven?

Say for example: I know that I'll be forgiven for whatever I do - before I do it.

This could make some transgress, knowing they'll be automatically forgiven.

.

What you're talking about there is absolution, the forgiveness of sins by a priest, not the forgiveness of sins commited against you by others. Before absolution can be can be given you must genuinely repent your sin and genuinely intend not to commit that sin again. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card, absolution only works when there is genuine contrition, confession, and an intention to undo the effects of the sin as much as possible. And, yes, as long as there is contrition any sin can be forgiven, with conditions attached. This belief is shared by all the major Christian Churches, only the forms of absolution differ. Catholic Canon Law states;

It is not true that for the Catholic the mere "telling of one's sins" suffices to obtain their forgiveness. Without sincere sorrow and purpose of amendment, confession avails nothing, the pronouncement of absolution is of no effect, and the guilt of the sinner is greater than before.

In the Catholic Church there are certain sins which may not be forgiven by an ordinary priest or even, in some cases, the superior or Bishop and must be referred to the Pope, these are termed "reserved sins" and usually apply to sins committed by priests.

Absolution is a sacrament and may only be administered by an ordained minister. If the minister believes there is genuine contrition he may not refuse absolution, this is the crux of the matter. As refusal of absolution can be seen by believers as condemnation to an eternity in hell those with the power to be absolve have to be very sure of what they are doing when they refuse to administer it. It doesn't matter whether modern society finds something inexcuasble or not, it has no power to absolve. Look at it from the point of view of the church. They believe they hold the keys of heaven and hell, they believe they alone have the ability to forgive in the name of God and to remove the stain of sin from the soul, the church is 2,000 years old and has seen societies and civilizations come and go - it believes itself to be eternal and the idea that they should adapt thenselves to the mores of modern society rather than society doing what the church says is anathema to many. The struggle between secular and sacred is ongoing and the church believes itself to be the bulwark of faith against the flood of secular materialism.

I'm well aware of the lies, cover-ups, and intimidation performed by the Catholic Church in it's attempt to protect the child-rapists (so much more accurate than "Paedophile Priests", don't you think) within it's ranks. To me whether or not the Church absolves them from their sins is not an issue, nor is the world's attitude to that forgiveness, to me the issue is why did the Church protect these people for so long (and it still continues to do so), why did it ignore all the evidence of rape and abuse, why did it threaten the victims and take care of the predators? And why on earth are these people still being protected and being treated differently than a non-ordained rapist - to me the position of trust these people occupied, a position of trust even greater than that normally given to teachers, means that their punishment should be correspondingly more severe and investigations more rigorous. I would have no objection to seeing warrant-carrying police kicking in the doors of Bishops palaces and carrying away church records of the last 50 years or so, taking those priests the church knew to be paedophiles from the retirement homes and monasteries the church hid them in and finally punishing them as they deserve.

And it occurs to me while typing this that the world also shares some of the blame for this situation. It has never been a secret that many priests were paedophiles, there have been jokes about priests and altar-boys for hundreds of years. In most of the investigations I've seen conspiracies to protect those priests have been unearthed, collusion between church, police, politicians, and ordinary members of the congregation who seem to have thought the plight of violated children was of far less importance than preserving the churches facade of rectitude and moral authority. From my own point of view the only good thing to come out of this whole vile shambles is the complete collapse of the Churches political and moral influence in my home country, a country that until very recently was almost the textbook definition of "priest-ridden".

One last thing, we normally talk as if this was purely a Catholic or a Christian problem. It's not, it's prevalent in Buddhist and Islamic countries as well, here in Thailand it happens frequently and is covered up in exactly the same way as it was and is covered up in Christian countries. That's one reason my son will never spend his school holidays as a junior monk in a temple. Parts of the West have, finally, woken up to the holy predators in their midst, would to God the rest of the world would as well.

Plenty of pedos were never sexually abused as children, pointing to a possible organic cause:

Brain :: Pedophilia patients are found to have deficits in brain activation

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, Walter and colleagues report that pedophilic patients showed reduced activation of the hypothalamus, a brain region involved in regulating physiologic arousal and hormone release, as compared to healthy individuals when they were viewing sexually arousing pictures of adults. Deficits of activation in the frontal cortex were associated with the extent of pedophilic behavior. In other words, when shown erotic pictures of adults, the brains of the pedophilic patients had reduced reactions in the pleasure center of the brain, indicating an altered sexual interest.

Pedophilia patients are found to have deficits in brain activation

Brain tumour 'caused paedophilia'


The man has since had the tumour removed

A brain tumour caused a 40-year-old man to become obsessed with sex and to molest children, doctors have reported.

The married schoolteacher from the United States, who had no previous history of sex offences, had an egg-sized tumour in the right lobe of the orbifrontal cortex, according to a report from newscientist.com.

This is the part of the brain responsible for judgement, impulse control and social behaviour.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2345971.stm