Dear Forward,

1) I am not Catholic, not even Christian.

2) No priest will break the seal of the confessional - there will simply no longer be confessions in Australia. I suppose it makes you very happy, but it won't make child-victims of paedophilia happy. Due to mandatory-reporting laws, the conscientious ones among them already cannot use your services as a mental-health practitioner, now they will not be able to use confession either. What's left for them? Suicide perhaps? Or becoming a perpetrator themselves?

3) Problematic as the Catholic Church is, the state is the worst cockroach of all and nobody should be made to abide by their laws. Yes, offending priests should pay for their crimes, but not at the hands of the state (also not with my tax-money). Instead, the church itself should instruct them to cut off their offending members and drown themselves if even that doesn't work.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Nobody is threatening you Sir.

However, we have covered this ground in other discussions.
I really do not care to cover the same ground with you
once again. Except to once again state that ours is a
secular state. As such it can protect the freedom of all
religions for worship. Religion instructs its adherents on
faith, morals and conscience. But there is not a separate
stream of law derived from religious sources that competes
with or supplants Australian law in governing our civil
society. The source of our law is the democratically elected
legislature.

It is high time that religious organisations were made to
account for the misdeeds of their clergy in the courts.
And punished accordingly as appropriate.

Foxy,

"But there is not a separate
stream of law derived from religious sources that competes
with or supplants Australian law in governing our civil
society. The source of our law is the democratically elected
legislature."

Have you got a blind spot about Tribal Law, which is religious law at bottom.

Tribal law which results in barbaric actions are still tolerated today. Much of Indigenous mythology is used to justify these actions. The left are very selective in their generalisations.

To Is Mise. You said:

<Interesting, but it wouldn't apply to homosexual paedophiles.>

There are a few verses in the bible that instead of suggesting priests to be celibate, (I think Mathew 19:10-12 is were celibacy among priests stems from); instead of suggesting that, the qualifications for being a deacon or an overseer (including elders and priests) is to have a family that they manage well and being faithful to their wife. (1 Timothy 3:4, 3:12, Titus 1:5-9). I'm there use if they can't manage their family well how could they manage the church.

Therefore if in order to be a priest a man would require to have (or have had) a family and manage the family well. I hat would potentially resolve both sex issues of child abuse and homosexual pedophiles. Also though I can think of the verses right now there are a few that might lead to certain behaviors being enough to lose their station of leading the church. (Such as being divorced or committing adultery). If these rules were applied to priesthood then I think it would dramatically change the problems associated with priests abusing children.

Dear Foxy,

Yes, I have read this paragraph several times before.
It mentions 'our' (or 'ours') three times: "ours is a secular state", "our civil society" and "our law".

For "our" there must first be "us": who are those "us"?

Certainly it does not include myself because I don't own a state (secular or otherwise), a society (civil or otherwise) or a law.

You see, I have no interest to impose any of the above on you and your people, but your people (whoever the "our" refers to) want to impose theirs on me and on religious people in general.

As for the cover/excuse of democracy, I have no interest in the internal arrangements, mechanisms and procedures within your group - it's really none of my business how you handle things among you, just leave me alone as well as all others who never agreed to belong to your group to begin with.

You say: "It is high time that religious organisations were made to account for the misdeeds of their clergy in the courts"

No, there is no such thing as "THE courts", what you really mean is that you want others to be judged in YOUR courts, that is in the courts of YOUR GROUP, the predators who impose themselves by force over the rest of us.

At least don't lie as if you want "separation of state and church": I do, but you don't want separation, you rather want the state, your own particular group, to dominate and crush the religious.

---

Dear Not_Now.Soon,

It is great for you to come out with ideas on how to reduce child-sexual-abuse in churches. I believe we all like that and should indeed discuss it, but elsewhere because it dilutes this topic, which is the dangerous subjugation of religion by secular states.