@Pandora I’m going to assume that this was meant to be directed at me.
The statement I was reacting to was this: “Having your children participate in services is not a requirement either, it’s a choice.” We’ll ignore the fact that Catholic doctrine makes skipping Mass without a very good reason a grave sin and in some cases a mortal sin, meaning that it actually is a requirement. Instead, I’ll point out that there is nothing in that statement or the whole answer that implies that @KNOWITALL was trying to say something about the parents’ responsibility. In fact, there wasn’t anything like that until you suggested it for her. If that was what she had meant, she could have said so. Instead, she needed someone else to make excuses for her, at which point she claimed to have meant that all along.
I agree that the parents are guilty of something if they knowingly leave their children with a molester, but @KNOWITALL brought it up as if it mitigated the priest’s responsibilities. “You shouldn’t have left your child with him” is the exact same argument as “you shouldn’t have been wearing that.” In fact, all of @KNOWITALL‘s early answers to this question are rape apologism. This one tries to pretend that other denominations doing bad things somehow changes whether the Catholic Church is a criminal organization. Even if the Catholic Church is not more of a criminal organization than other denominations, that doesn’t mean the answer to the question @ragingloli asked is “no.” And the David Koresh bit is stupid. We stopped hearing about it because he died in a fire. The authorities didn’t blow it off. All they tried to blow off was Koresh’s fucking head!
Honestly, @KNOWITALL‘s attempt to be the rape apologist for the church is all the worse because she has family experience with child rape. Of course parents should be careful who they leave their children with, but priests shouldn’t be victimizers. They are supposed to moral leaders, and the parents we’re talking about are people who were assured their whole life that the Catholic Church has their very souls in its hands and is most definitely trustworthy. Are you saying that everyone should have been just as suspicious of their priests as they were of random strangers on the street even before there was any evidence of a massive molestation conspiracy? And would that really change the answer to the question @ragingloli asked, which is whether the Catholic Church is a criminal organization? They can be criminals even if other people were irresponsible.
@bolwerk Other people have already suggested as much. It doesn’t change whether or not the Church is criminal, though.