Is This NOT A Dictatorship?

I wish my Dad was still living. He was a devout Catholic. I'd like to know what he would think about the on going refusal of his Church to fess up to the on going sex-abuse scandal.

It reminds me of a group of kids who have been caught in wrong doing having found it won't go away just because they refuse to admit it. They then try to lie their way out of it and find that doesn't work either.

When the Pope finally acknowledged the problem he had this to say,

dictatorships such as Nazism 'cannot accept a God above ideological power. Thank God we don't live under dictatorships today, but there exist subtle forms of dictatorships...a conformity, in which it's obligatory to think like everyone else, to act like everyone."

It sounds to me like he's speaking about his own church, "Subtle forms of dictatorship." My thinking harkens back to having been raised Catholic. Obedience by fear. Hell being the end result. In Catechism we were not to question. Even if we did not understand, accept. I can remember spending hours, with my Mom helping me, memorize the answers to the questions in the Cathechism. One was obligated to eat fish on Friday. Yes, I'm that old. Women were obligated to wear hats to church. One was obligated to attend Mass on Sundays and all Holy Days of Obligation. If you didn't...

My Dad was so indoctrinated I wasn't allowed to attend a DeMolay dance nor date a boy who was a Unitarian nor attend classes at the YWCA, what's more join! If that isn't a dictatorship, what is?

The arrogance of power and isolationism has finally come home to roost. The sins of the Fathers are no longer an internal issue. An even greater sin, if they're still looking for reasons to serve penanace, is that those in the highest of places allowed it to happen and happen and happen.

Suddenly they are being forced to ascribe to the"conformity in which it's obligatory to act like everyone else". It's called obeying the law! The church should no more be exempt from it than Congress, but that's another post!

Peggy Noonan suggests a good dose of female common sense would go a long way toward straightening out the thinking of the men who singularly make up the hierarchy. I disagree. What will go a long way to straightening out the church is to come into the 21st century and allow it's priests and nuns to marry; to live a life where men and women do not have to supress their sexual nature. Living in the same world as their parishoners would certainly go a long way to giving them credibility when it comes to counseling people on how to solve their problems and live their lives.

Until the inner sanctum of tired old men clinging to ways long past outside their walls, they will continue their dictatorial ways, scandals will recur and membership will diminish.

Perhaps Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins should be successful in having the Pope arrested when he visits Great Britain, if only momentarily, for crimes against humanity. If nothing else, it would get the attention of not only the Pope, but those who manipulate from behind the throne.