I don't know that it's pretending they didn't happen as much as it is the apologetic defense you mentioned above - pedophile priests are sinners, sure, but that's just a mistake they've made, on the whole, they're great people and eminently qualified to lead Catholics to salvation. Everyone sins and falls short of glory, so we need to be willing to forgive them of their offenses if we want to be forgiven of ours.
There is a lot of cruelty going on, much of it sanctioned firmly by the current Bishop of Rome, who wants to move the Church back toward condemnation and away from a more "accept the sinner, reject the sin" attitude fostered by the previous occupant. Not that he budged on any of the issues you've highlighted, as far as I remember, but he was much less hard-line about it, and that made him a more popular and kindly figure.
One point of interesting note, though, is that American Catholics are weird compared to the rest of the world when it comes to the severity of their doctrinal following - they're much more likely to use the forbidden birth control things, they are often okay with promoting their use as a curb to HIV-1, and some of them are much more open about the possibility of having gay people worship with them. They still hate women pretty firmly, but I sometimes wonder if that's more out of tradition than of belief. And they're the ones most likely to have exposed and come forward about priestly abuse.
If there's going to be reform coming to the Catholic Church, it will probably originate in America, by my guess. Of course, that may be me being an ethnocentrist, so take with appropriate salt.
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chiming
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Date: 2010-10-28 06:28 pm (UTC)From:There is a lot of cruelty going on, much of it sanctioned firmly by the current Bishop of Rome, who wants to move the Church back toward condemnation and away from a more "accept the sinner, reject the sin" attitude fostered by the previous occupant. Not that he budged on any of the issues you've highlighted, as far as I remember, but he was much less hard-line about it, and that made him a more popular and kindly figure.
One point of interesting note, though, is that American Catholics are weird compared to the rest of the world when it comes to the severity of their doctrinal following - they're much more likely to use the forbidden birth control things, they are often okay with promoting their use as a curb to HIV-1, and some of them are much more open about the possibility of having gay people worship with them. They still hate women pretty firmly, but I sometimes wonder if that's more out of tradition than of belief. And they're the ones most likely to have exposed and come forward about priestly abuse.
If there's going to be reform coming to the Catholic Church, it will probably originate in America, by my guess. Of course, that may be me being an ethnocentrist, so take with appropriate salt.