Pope Francis: anti-egoist, anti-individualist, anti-capitalist

Good post, Bill.

"dung of the devil" - I'd never heard that before... very earthy, very catchy.  His apologists in the Religious Right were talking about how he doesn't understand our capitalism and he has mixed it up with the harsh, crony-capitalism of the Argentina where he grew up.  But that is just so much dung - as the quotes you've listed show, he knows exactly what he is attacking.

Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.

I agree with your take on that paragraph and point out that it ends with claiming that capitalism not only enslaves us, destroys our society, pits us against one another, but also puts at risk our common home (Hello, Global Warming).  This is a man who hates capitalism and I suspect that he does so because at some level he sees capitalism freeing man from slavery, misery, hatred and fear (those things he takes as his justification).
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As to the pedophilia and child molestation, it isn't caused by vows of celebacy or the prohibition on married priests.  If it was just the difficulties of celebacy in the face of the sexual urge, we wouldn't see children be molested.  We see lots of illicit connections with female parishers, nuns, and homosexual activity with adults.  I suspect that there are other things that move so many priests towards children.  One, of course, is that there is a degree of sanction of that evil.  The church forgives, turns its head, and if necessary, transfers the offending priest to another state to protect him. Most of these individuals wouldn't be married, if that were allowed.  They sought their calling as much as safe place to hide themselves with their shameful, sexual attraction to children as to lose themselves in their idea of religion.  What channels the urge to have sex towards children is, I suspect, something to do with 'lost innocence.'  The priest is coming from deeply repressed personal shame (my guess) and using rationalization and denial to avoid seeing the reality of what they are doing and the harm to the child.  They are like a kind of emotional vampire trying to get for themselves some of the child's innocence.  In an ugly sort of psychological logic, they destroy that innocence with the sex and with their partial, self-made blindness to what they are doing, and their subconscious enacts a kind of justice by keeping the old, psychological wounds alive and their self-esteem low.  Most of these people would have been pedophiles if there were no church.  There might even be a few of them who were sociopathic, psychopathic pedophiles that saw on the news how the church protected molestors and ran off to join.  What is remarkable is that an institution would be as accepting of this... That tells us a lot about the inner-priest and what they see as man's normal state that they would accept the pain and misery and loss of innocence instead of going after such acts as an unnatural enemy to be fought.
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When I step back and compare what Pope Francis says to what we see from Islamic fundamentalism, the main difference is that fundamental Christianity wants to feed off of misery and what they truely worship is that state of misery.  They gave up their innocence in the sense of having given up on personal happiness and joy and achievement and they suppress their part in that by clinging tightly to the belief that those are things that aren't possible on earth.  When they talk about unity, joy and rejoicing, it is only to attract the miserable closer and to bind them more closely.  Fundamental Islam worships death and the act of killing.  Hatred for any opposition is their holy state of being while on earth.  They have no pretense of being in a state of bliss here on earth and their image of a blissful afterlife is so thin as to only be workable by those who are quick to escape into delusion when reality threatens to tell them that something is wrong with what they are doing.

Bill,

I think the reason they go after children, Steve, may be that children are more easily manipulated into thinking that since it's a spiritual leader, the sex isn't sinful; plus the child can more easily be coached into keeping quiet.

That's true.  And many child molestors are strongly into control - control freaks.  But, for most part, the manipulation you mentioned would only be a tactical approach.  No healthy adult WANTS to have sex with children.  No healthy adult finds a little boy or a little girl 'sexy.'  The nature of pedophilia as a disorder is the grossly inappropriate and obsessive sexual attraction to prepubesent children.  The attraction comes first, then comes the formation of a goal to have sex with a child, then, finally comes the working out of the tactics - the 'how to.'

When I worked with Los Angles County Dept. of Children's Services, one of the things I did was to run group therapy sessions for convicted sex offenders.   (Admittedly, none of the people in my two groups were priests).  With real pedophiles there is no talk-therapy technique that is effective.  Mostly my goal was to help them minimize any stresses in their lives and to keep track of their stability in staying away from temptations. 

Bill,

I agree that accepting married men as priests would likely decrease the number of pedophiles in the priesthood, but not necessarily the number of pedophiles in existence... they would seek out other venues (becoming teachers, day care attendents, camp counselors, cub scout leaders, etc.)

And we don't know how much of the attraction of the Catholic church to these people is related to the church being protective of them when caught and the absence of many kinds of monitoring or transparency in their actions.  I'd guess that these are the strongest pulls.  Pedophiles tend to be sneaky and planning their secret lives.

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In some ways, our entire discussion is kind of like talking about what kind of deckchair arrangement would be best on the Titanic.  At least in the sense of spending time thinking about any ways to get the church to let priests marry.  Catholicism itself is a giant epistemological and moral mess.  The Catholic church is huge, and millions of Americans are still held tight in its sway.  They keep alive the basic idea of sacrifice and that man's natural state is misery.  What is amazing is that they are able to dress it up with the jeweled cloaks, and great cathedrals, and latin chants and mystical nonsense and get away with what in fact is a kind of extortion: sacrifice as we tell you to, or you will burn for eternity in the fires of hell.  They have Catholic schools where nuns terrify young children in their classrooms with the image being tortured and burned forever if they don't adopt these insane beliefs.  The only way a person can function when they take these beliefs seriously is to learn to partition their mind off, accept as a working hypothesis that some areas are off limits to reason, to split theory and practice apart and hold all of morality as muddled mess where one approximizes.  It keeps people partly child-like in many ways that aren't good.

Bill,

I agree. 

I was stunned watching the way the supporters of the Pope would become almost orgastic in their enthusiasm for him.  They did everything but deify him on the spot.  Everything he said was the essence of wisdom, and every move he made was evidence of the depth of his character.  He said, "God is love" and they were bowled over as if all the questions of life were now solved.  They focused on the tiniest thing, even things that were objectively ambiguous, and had no problem seeing wonderfulness that just plain wasn't there.  It was delusional.  And it was not just one or two people.... it was tens or hundreds of thousands.  It was a harsh reminder of how easy it is for the human animal to let go of reason and critical thinking and follow an emotional urge... like a bunch of lemmings.

The fact of the matter is that we are all sinners.  We are fallible, not omniscient.

Another argument by Marotta that implies that since we aren't omniscent that our arguments are suspect.  As I've said before, Marotta isn't just into relativism, but opposed to any certainty (except for his certainty that he is right and I am wrong).
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The failures of Catholic priests is only ripped from the headlines to provide a confirmation bias.

Really?  Who is doing this ripping?  Some cabal of conspiring anti-Catholics?  Do you think that all quoted headlines (or asserted positions) amount to no more that a product of confirmation bias?  Can anything be reasoning or knowledge, or is everything, according to Marotta, just a product of confirmation bias?

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My point is that we are all fallible creatures.  The priests who molested children were immoral. They are not alone. Condemn them, of course, but do not condemn them as if they are special.

Speak for yourself, Marotta.  You feel some kind of moral relativism that lets you adopt the Christian doctrine that we are all sinners, but I don't.  I feel a very distinct difference between myself and child molesters.
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I need to mention the weirdness of how Marotta's mind 'works.'  He made some kind of strange attack on Bill and I that amounts to this:  We didn't attack Mit Romney  in 2012 because some Mormons have religious rituals involving the way they dress for bed.  Can anyone find any logic in that attack?
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I challenge you to put "Republican homosexual" in your search engine.

I know that your deep affinity for the far-left attracts you to things like that, but I would have expected more of you.
1. Does a Google search prove that Bill and I were wrong on any of the statements we made?
2. We were discussing the psychology of child molesting relative to the Church's tendency to cover up these crimes and whether or not pedophiles sought out priesthood to engage in their activities, and if the church's repressive attitudes on sex have anything to do with priests molesting children.  How is that answered by your Google search challenge?
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...a priest who molests children is just a child molester.

No, he is a priest who molests children and our discussion was about that relationship.  Do you have Catholic sensibilities that were offended?  Are you aware of how much that post of yours sounds like an outraged liberal catholic who feels under attack?  Do you think that the Catholic church's damnation of any form of sex that isn't related to procreation and sanctioned by the church isn't relative to the discussion?  To tell the truth, I would have expected a better argument from a member of the church than presented in that post of yours.

We expect that the pope is of necessity a mystic altruist collectivist. Any deviation from that would be remarkable.  (For one remarkable exception, see for instance Pope Sylvester II who brought learning into Europe from Muslim Spain c. 1000 AD.)  The discussion here of pedophilia is more problematic.

Progressives point to the fact that over 20% of Black youth have primary contact with the criminal justice system as evidence of structural racism in our society.  Over one in five Black youths, aged 15 to 23 are in prison, in jail, on parole, or on probation. The structural racism is easy to perceive. The connection between those two is harder to prove, because, obviously, 80% of Black youth have no primary contact with the criminal justice system.

Similarly, the fact that (just guessing here) 99% of Roman Catholic priests keep their vows of celibacy should cast a harsh light on illogical inferences about the sociology of religion.  Moreover, the fact that (my guess) 99% of pedophiles are not Roman Catholic priests should call into question any attempt at a causal relationship between celibacy and other forms of deviance.  (Celibacy is a sexual deviance, just as gluttony and anorexia are both eating disorders.  The failure point of the analogy is that gluttony and anorexia are bad for your health, by simple observation. No such assertion for celibacy has been established. Is vegetarianism an eating disorder, given our omnivorous nature? Perhaps celibacy is just that kind of a choice.)

Furthermore, Eastern Orthodox rites, which are also Apostolic churches, allow men who are married to become priests, though men who become priests before they marry cannot.  That would seem to offer an opportunity for a controlled study, if anyone really cared to find out the facts, rather than just pontificating...

Steve, you never had a problem understanding Fred Bartlett's rhapsodies. You may have a mental block that prevents you from understanding what I write. Perhaps you purposely obfuscate in order to have an argument.  Perhaps something else motivates  you.  Regardless of your inability or unwillingness to understand my messages, I certainly do not want your smoke screens to cause misunderstanding to any third party.  Let me be clear(er). 

MEM:  The fact of the matter is that we are all sinners.  We are fallible, not omniscient.  A Catholic priest is no more or less immune to temptation from Satan than any other mortal. We all need salvation through Jesus Christ our Savior. 

SW: Mostly we just talked about factors that favored Catholic priests engaging in child molestation.  The way the church protected the offenders is an example. 

 

My comment was rhetorical only, an identification of the Church's position. I have never advocated for salvation through Christ. Christians do. The Catholic Church has another way to deal with the problem.  It is why the Church does not turn priests over the police when they embezzle Church funds, which some do.  We all sin.  If you are truly remorseful, you confess your sin, receive absolution, and perform penance.  This is recognized in law in many jurisdictions (though not Utah). The confessional, the doctor's office, the lawyer's office, in therapy with your psychiatrist or psychologist, those are all special relationships that cannot be pierced, except in special circumstances, such as being likely to physically harm others or yourself. 

Look at it this way: according to U.S. military custom, no flag ever flies higher than the American flag, except the chaplain's pennant when services are being held.  As atheists, we might view that as an archaic custom, in appropropritate in a modern, secular society, perhaps even a violation of the First Amendment rights of others.  I understand it as symbolizing the fact that moral law is higher than political authority.

My points about Tammy Fae and the GOP highlighted the fact that your interest in pedophile priests was without philosophical context. You never cared before. You never cared about pedophilia. Bill at least had the insight to identify the mysticist-altruist-collectivist axis about which the Pope and Church revolve. And that much was fine.  It was when you both went off the deep end spinning baseless theories that I ran half a dozen counter-examples.  You were not concerned about the sexual perversions of Mormons. And, really, who cares?  More to the point, your favoring the Republican Party prevented your from connecting the dots in what you would call a "floating abstraction" to condemn Mitt Romney as an advocate of perversion.  But, when the Pope comes to town, suddenly, this is news worth commenting on.  Over on MSK's OL, someone started a discussion about Pope Francis's visit to the US. I replied with a story about a traffic accident.  (Do you see the intention there, or would you like me to spell it out.)

You are right: I have softer spot for Catholicism than I do for Protestantism. In truth, I have an even bigger affinity for Jews than for Catholics.  And when someone here took a shot at Buddhism, you joined Sam Erica and me in touting meditation. So, we all have our preferences.

As for sexual energy and its placement, misplacement, or replacement, I recently read a biography of Paul Erdös.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 10/06, 2:30pm)

Marotta you said,

Look at it this way: according to U.S. military custom, no flag ever flies higher than the American flag, except the chaplain's pennant when services are being held.  As atheists, we might view that as an archaic custom, in appropropritate in a modern, secular society, perhaps even a violation of the First Amendment rights of others.  I understand it as symbolizing the fact that moral law is higher than political authority.

    That's an interesting idea, and it deviates from the traditional far-left "secular" agenda of moral relativism and absoluteness of state power. But there are two problems with that; any sort of religious symbol doesn't represent any moral law that ought to be respected above the law, and even if it did, no government has the right to give any special recognition to any moral law, even to Objectivism. I realise that you were not actually supporting the military custom, but you were definitely trying to find a diamond in the rough when it comes to religion in politics. In reality, your just trying to get blood from a stone.

    Luke you responded to my statement by saying,

Seriously?  So the morality of respecting human life deserves no special recognition and codification?  This strikes me as untenable on its face.

    There was a podcast Leonard Peikoff did a few years ago, in which he discussed an Objectivist dictator. While he was specifically talking about a dictator who enforced all of the tenets of objectivism as he saw them by force, he still reaches the conclusion more or less that there are some parts of philosophy outside of the sphere of government consideration. The realm of government, in a rights respecting society, is limited only to the exercise of certain powers (the military, the police, the courts, etc.), and to some epistemological issues (standard of evidence in a court of law, when the actions of a foreign nation constitutes an act of aggression, etc.). Individual rights deserve recognition and codification by government, but only to aid in defining the scope of government power. To codify an entire system of ethics or philosophy into law would simply be using the law as a propaganda tool. Think about how christians go nuts over how the Declaration of Independence recognized a "creator", is it really a proper function of the law to give ammunition to certain groups and beliefs? I think not.