Bren, I don't know how you came to conclude that the article you linked us to provided "balance ". It was written by a committed apologist for the church who cherry-picked the evidence to suit his line. The welter of strong negative response to that piece should have given you the cue that if it's "balance" you aspire to you needed to find something more reasoned and based on the range of available evidence.

Dear Killarney,

You remind me of the joke when a mother buys two ties for her son's birthday. He showed up at his mother's house wearing one of the ties, and she said, "Wat's wrong with the other one?"

I don't deny that priests can be frustrated also. However, that was not the topic.

There is a question of how voluntary entrance into the priesthood or the nuns' orders were. Both sons and daughters were often designated for the church, and sometimes there was intense pressure on them. Even though entrance could be voluntary a teenager might not fully realise what he or she was committing himself to.

Actually I believe that we would have a much better world if the Roman Empire had not become Christian and had stayed pagan. The pagan world of many gods was much more tolerant of other beliefs than the monotheistic religions. It also fostered a spirit of enquiry which Christianity in general opposed. Hypatia, a brilliant female astronomer philosopher and mathematician, was murdered by a Christian mob in 415. Servetus who was a great anatomist who was aware of pulmonary circulation was put to death in Calvin's Protestant Geneva in 1553. Bruno who speculated on the existence of other solar systems was burned at the stake in Catholic Rome in 1600. It was no coincidence that the rise of Christianity meant the beginning of the Dark Ages. Theodosius, the Roman emperor, who made Christianity the official religion severely persecuted pagans who remained loyal to their faith.

It was Theodosius not Constantine who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and suppressed other beliefs. Constantine issued the Edict of Toleration which gave Christianity equal status with other religions.

Without the ascent of Christianity over paganism we would have been denied the Inquisition, the Wars of the Reformation, the Dark Ages, the Holocaust informed by the centuries of Christian-inspired hatred, the witch hunts, the Crusades etc. The triumph of Christianity over paganism was a defeat for tolerance and reason.

I think David f is half right and half wrong about who was responsible for clamping "Christianity" on the citizens of Rome. Constantine started by tolerating the cult, but the overthrow and replacement of Hellenism proceeded throughout his reign, until in the last years he had converted the new “Christianity” into an imperial rather than a Christian organisation and tolerance of it had morphed into a concordat with it rather like Musso’s with the same lot under fascism. Constantine took control of a Sunni-Shia-type spat between the Nicene creed (which asserted Christ was the born son of God) and the Arian creed which asserted he had been created, and ruled for the Nicene, outlawing and rigorously suppressing the popular religions (Hellenism), and by the end of his rule he had started the pillaging and tearing down of the traditional pagan temples.

It’s true, though, that later Theodosius blossomed as a suitable patron for the “Christians”, massacring 7000 circus fans in revenge for some slight or other, and around the same time declared the “Christians” the official Roman state church. Theodosius thus formalised the work initiated and virtually completed by Constantine.

To Killarney: Thanks for your comment. You’ll see why I have taken as my pen-name the name of the only halfway decent emperor Rome ever had! Foolishly he got killed invading Persia – unwise then and unwise today.

The behaviour of religious orders when it came down to the welfare of children who were deemed 'at risk'was often one of blame the victim. As someone who grew up Catholic, I saw this in everyday life: if you were poor, you did not work hard enough; if you were sick, you must have done something wrong so do penance; if you were a child, you did as you were told... regardless. Child abuse and exploitation are not limited to the religious institutions but instead we must recognise, acknowledge and rectify the hurt and damage that all institutions have inflicted because we as a society have washed our hands of the sick, the damaged, the elderly, the poor and the young. We take no personal interest and invest institutions (govt, religious)with the power to do as they see fit. No one wants to get their hands dirty.

The worst part is these charities get TAX EXEMPTION so technically the taxpayer are subsidizing commercial businesses.

Emperor Julian

‘Foolishly he got killed invading Persia – unwise then and unwise today.’

So true! Stay tuned, though. Current unwisdom towards Persia escalates by the day.

Margas

‘... we must recognise, acknowledge and rectify the hurt and damage that all institutions have inflicted because we as a society have washed our hands of the sick, the damaged, the elderly, the poor and the young.’

Exactly! I suspect the media likes to focus so much on abuse in religious institutions, especially Catholic, because it takes the heat off our society’s increasing ‘secular’ callousness towards the growing tide of have-nots.

David f.

‘I don't deny that priests can be frustrated also.’

True. And I’m not saying that you do.

I'm pointing out a double standard in how abuse by priests and nuns is perceived. Why is the former deemed, semantically speaking, to be driven by evil, and the latter by (sexual) frustration?

However, I do agree with all your points about paganism and tolerance.

Philip S

True. Get rid of these archaic tax exemptions and most religions would collapse very quickly.