March 20, 2002

10:38 AM

God Changes EverythingLet's say there was a school system or a chain of clinics on whose professional staff were a certain number of men who molested the children in their care and who, whenever this behavior came to the attention of their superiors, were shifted to another school or clinic, with parents and colleagues, not to mention the justice system, kept in the dark whenever possible...
posted by cell divide (8 comments total)

Just in response to the part you quoted in your post :

There is absolutely no reason not to prosecute these people like anyone else. Give em a trial and if found guilty throw the bums in jail to rot.

Isn't it ironic that the writer seems to blame everything on the offenders religion. Seems she's falling into the same trap that the people she's complaining about did. I had some comments on the rest but I won't clutter Mefi with them.
posted by revbrian at 11:39 AM on March 20, 2002

Sensible people recognize that religion has a place in the overall ecology of existence. We are no more going to abandon religion because of pedophile priests or terrorist mullahs than we are going to abandon democracy because of corrupt congresspeople or ditch capitalism on account of the Enron scandal. God really does change everything. The only thing worse than human nature under the influence of religion (not pretty) is human nature without the restraint even of religious hypocrisy. John Lennon's "Imagine" it ain't.
posted by Faze at 11:43 AM on March 20, 2002

Is there a point somewhere in that Nation essay? What has Israel to do with the Catholics' scandal? If the author wants to complain of "fundamentalism," that isn't a good job. Israel is a secular state, while the American brand of Roman Catholicism has become more and more liberal since the 1960s.
posted by Erendadus at 11:59 AM on March 20, 2002

The way I read it, the point was that even secular and rational people such as Americans, Israelis, and others, when confronted by the blanket of religion, will allow certain things to slip by that they would otherwise be up in arms about.
posted by cell divide at 12:12 PM on March 20, 2002

Israel is a secular state?

I know that marriages there can only be performed after they have been approved by a very strict council of Orthodox Jews. There are restrictions on interfaith marriages and between those who cannot "prove" their Jewishness far enough back.

Doesnt sound that secular to me.
posted by Irontom at 12:13 PM on March 20, 2002

irontom: the ones who are secular and rational (as cell divide claims) are not the ones who enforce or even support the laws you reference. But they do stand.

Lots of secular israelis get married in Cyprus.
posted by zpousman at 12:30 PM on March 20, 2002

Israel is a secular state

Also, try being a non-Jewish citizen of Israel and see if you have the same rights of land ownership, etc. No, as Dick Cheney has recently trumpeted, Israel is a Jewish state. Jews whose ancestors never lived there are welcome to come. Non-Jews whose ancestors were ethnically cleansed by a Jewish military force in 1948 are not welcome to come back.
posted by Zurishaddai at 1:30 PM on March 20, 2002

Let's have another hypothetical.....

Let's say there is a clinic, where an employee molests people under his care. Say, those people are employees, and he is their manager. And, when this happens, the manager is found out, and transferred, or the employees are transferred, but nothing else happens. The police are never involved, and no employee working in that manager's department is given any notice that this is an issue.

Now, let's call this clinic "just about any big business in America".

Without lawsuits, it would still be happening. God isn't necessary at all.....
posted by dwivian at 8:40 PM on March 20, 2002