A deflective spirit is still alive and well in the church. (Main Forum)

by Oh Yet We Trust, Brisbane, Sunday, March 14, 2010, 11:01 (1194 days ago) @ SunnyDaze

We cannot say "oh well the Muslims are doing it..the Presbyterians are doing it ..so lets not say anything.All of it is to be condemned and strenuously fought against. ~ Jane

Hear, hear! Jane. I just wrote the following comment in response to yet another deflector commenting on the article, "Opinion - Pope must act decisively on clerical abuse", and I will post it here because my comments there aren't always admitted:

AlexP, why don't you, and others who say the same, go and worship in another church, get involved in a secular or even atheist group, perhaps spend more of your limited time to being and living in a community other than the one you are involved in.

As a victim/survivor, I am so sick of hearing what you say: For those who are Catholics, who spend their limited time in Catholic work, whose concern is their church - they concentrate on their own community and the object, community, family of their love. For them to go out and spend what would be countless hours of attention and research and countless amounts of physical and psychological energy to get a more 'universal' picture of abuse or anything, is too much and would spread them too thinly to do a good job. There are already enough doing this.

We know, (are you listening), we KNOW that abuse happens everywhere in any institution - stop deflecting.

But for those who have been abused in the context of THEIR church, the affects go so deeply because of it happening in the context of CHURCH. Their very faith is undermined. As such it becomes a specialist, if you will, area which needs its own unique understanding (not for a minute suggesting to lessen the affects of family abuse - any abuse.

OYWT

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill