Should the catholic church be asking schoolchildren to sign this petition?

Rereading (should have previewed) I meant to type "many people have a civil ceremony and do not bring God into it at all"

But Lynn - we have had non-religious marriages for a long time. You might not like it, but that is the law. Marriage as defined by the Christian church is comparatively new in relation to the length of time that people have been forming sexual relationships all over the world. There are many different forms of partnership in different cultures and marriage as we now know it was the preserve of the rich until fairly recently. You speak as though your definition was set in stone and should govern the lives of all people all over the world.

I am not responsible for anything Peter Tatchell says or does, although I think he has been very brave on several occasions.

The number of people signing the petition is, I believe, about half a million. I think that leaves over fifty five million who have not signed it.
Whether or not the school children under 16 could sign the petition is a red herring - I do not think it should have been read out in schools and I think some headteachers agreed with me.

Some of your extrapolations are really quite odd - for example, why on earth should catholic couples not be allowed to marry in church just because same sex couples are allowed to marry in a civil ceremony?

May I ask the name of your cardinal? I hope it is not Sean Brady.

Lydia Centuries before the Christian church existed, couples were making public promises to be joined to each other in marriage. Even in church today, the vows made are NOT to God, but to one another "in the sight of God" for those who believe, and many people do not bring God into their ceremony at all.

The church defined what they saw as the purposes of marriage - the procreation of children, the avoidance of promiscuity, and the mutual comfort the pair would provide for one another, but these aims and desires were already in existence before they were so defined.

Should countless generations have been consigned to living alone because the church had not yet perfected their monopoly on "marriage" ? Are non-christians all "bastards" and "fornicators" ?

Greatnan
I agree with you

The whole issue was handled wrongly

All they did was put more children in danger and have caused really wonderful people who have spent their lives working for nothing to help other people a bad name
I hope the fact that people are more open about their sexual orientation will stop the fear of being found out
The time that was brought home to me was when I watched our old men on their knees praying asking for forgiveness for our church and to clear their church of these people
It was heartbreaking to watch
It truly brought me to tears
Our Cardinal is very outspoken but when he speaks you have no doubt about his love of people

Now to discuss the real thread

I don't believe any child in any School can sign anything without the authorisation of a parent so the letter was to be sent home so the parent will no doubt discuss the decision and may even decide whether they are to sign or not

As for the discussion of whether or not the government should change the definition of marriage

I note any person who states as I do that they believe marriage is and should be kept as a religious ceremony is automatically homophobic
So what does that make Peter Tatchel the person leading the campaign to change marriage

I spoke to him online during the campaign to close Catholic adoption agencies

He stated and with much vehemence and swearing incidentally that he would indeed close all Catholic adoption agencies and would put every priest in prison who refused to marry same sex couples

If we now look at the number of people in this country who have signed petitions to keep marriage as it is
The number of people supporting keeping marriage as it is far out ways the opposite
This is nothing short of an anti Christian and particularly an anti Catholic campaign

I can make a guarantee that if the government bring in a bill to change the law to allow marriage in church of same sex couples that the very next day we will see a case brought against a priest for not allowing a same sex couple to marry in the catholic church
Now lets look at what that will achieve
Could it be that catholic couples will no longer be able to marry in church or could it be that our priests will go to prison

But the most important thing for me is that this is in actual fact a small group of anti Christian anti Catholic people running this campaign because many people who are homosexual do not agree with their campaign

Lydia, yes, we certainly are in agreement about keeping abusers away from children, but I am not sure you understand my hostility to the church in this matter. The relative numbers of priests and other clergy or laity who abuse children are unimportant, no matter which studies you use. The point is that senior members of the catholic church knew about these crimes and covered them up. I don't think there is any other institution that has gone to such lengths to protect abusers.
I do feel sorry for devout catholics who must feel completely let down by the church - certainly it has had a profound effect in Ireland. The church will probably never again command the reverence and respect upon which it relied, and which enabled the dreadful catalogue of sins against children to continue.

Greatnan I think at last you and I have found something to agree on

I don't care who a paedophile is they should have been reported and removed from the church
Treatment for me is an irrelevance
Remove them from their duties and keep them away from children

Children who have been abused have an emotional dependence on the fact that an abuser has been punished

whenim64

I read a while back and watched a programme on telly which stated that no person could give a guarantee that any paedophile could ever be trusted again near children

My belief is that any paedophile man woman priest should be kept in prison forever
You are right when you state that the cost of the damage done to children is a lot more that the cost of keeping them in prison

I have no sympathy for any offending priest nor for the people who hide them
They give all the people in my church who work hard a bad name
Their was though a wide ranging investigation which proved that the figures proved that their were no more priests than other professions who carried out paedophilia but then we don't ever hear about any other person do we

I would prefer studies done here and quotes from studies done here but maybe they are not as useful

I can only speak for Scotland but it is my understanding that the rest of the UK have now reacted in the same way

No priest is allowed to be alone with a child whether that be in church or school
Every church is covered by cameras as is the entry to a priest house
Every Sunday we have a newsletter which states in bold no child should be allowed to walk about on their own

The catholic world is very different now so few go into the priesthood but I am confident the ones who do undergo an extensive examination to ensure that they have no inclination towards paedophilia

Sorry jeni if I had read your post first. what would I have written, mmm, what about
horatio To be gay, or not to be gay, that is the question!

Not as good but still horatio in this thread just does not realise that people don't have a choice whether they are gay or not.

horatio This is a conversation, not a formal debate – Gransnet not the Oxford Union. Virtually all threads go "off topic" at some stage. Have you looked at any others?

....must check for typos....'decided'

Hear Hear Greatnan. My son was able to express his sexual orientation as a teenager and had great support from family, a little amusement from his mates, but that was his own doing because he dediced to announce he was gay when he was 16, by slinging his arm round his boyfriend and giving him a kiss at a Labour party barbeque being hosted by friend's dad. The response? 'Dude! - why have you taken so long to tell us - we're you're mates? Here - have a drink!'

My daughter was devastated but said it explained a lot of things about her husband. She would have been willing to live with him platonically for the sake of the children, but he could not accept that and wanted to continue marital relations. As she found out he had been using male prostitutes she had to have an HIV/Aids test and then sue for divorce.
She told me he tried very hard to ignore his true feelings but in the end he succumbed.
I am very heartened by the attitude of young people. One of my grandsons told me a 16-year old friend had 'come out' when he was drunk at a party. To his surprise, nobody altered their behaviour towards him and they couldn't understand why he was afraid of telling them. They are the same with people of other ethnic origins too - they genuinely judge each person on his/her own personality and not by some stereotype.
It has taken a long time and many brave people have suffered but I am hopeful that homophobia will eventually exist in only a tiny handful of ignorant people.

It happened a lot in the past, lets hope homosexuals can be more honest now that they should be are accepted as part of a range of normal people in society. It must be.a blow to find you inadvertently married someone who could never be the person you thought you had married. It happened to one of my relatives and I believe it was very common. In this case the parents and the minister from their church knew the young man was gay but covered it up thinking marriage would cure him.

Because of the prevailing attitude towards homosexuality when he was young, my daughter's ex-husband denied his own sexuality and married her. She found him down-loading gay porn after 14 years of marriage and four children. I believe most gay men used to marry, and it often ended in misery for both them and their wives.
She did not blame him for being gay - she was just sorry that he had not been able to live a truthful life.

I am NOT going to rise to any more of this homophobes comments!
I am reporting this as offensive!

faye I did that quote from hamlet earlier!

I'd rather go off topic than follow the homophobic comments, thanks.

No

D'you think?

Oh Horatio you are so amusing!

Everyone is way off topic, so no replies!!!

Many thanks, that is very informative. I didn't know that treatment was still available in prison. I know that many, if not all, offenders, have persuaded themselves that what they are doing is not harmful, just showing love, is welcomed by the victim, etc. I suppose getting them to acknowledge the harm they are doing is the first step - although it has hard to see how any grown man cannot realise the physical pain he is causing a young boy, let alone the mental torture.

Beware - long reply!
Greatnan some offenders who are not deeply entrenched in their abusive behaviour, and want to change, will respond in varying degrees to treatment. Part (and a very significant part) of the treatment is in deconstructing the content of deviant sexual fantasies and teaching distraction, avoidance, spoiling, and other strategies to banish the sexual fantasies as they flit into their thoughts. If you can imagine a probation officer specialist asking you to hand over your most deviant and arousing sexual fantasy so they can ruin your surefire way to an orgasm, you can rate for yourself how unlikely that is to work with someone who doesn't want to change. They won't hand over what we would sometimes call their 'bottom-drawer deviant fantasies' - the ones that always work.

The problem with abusive priests is that they can be indoctrinated into corrupt sexual behaviour as they are already proved to have been indoctrinated in at least one other way (that may be contentious for believers in the faith). 100% of abusers have been abused in some way themselves (being abused doesn't predict you will become an abuser - far from it) and being corrupted into sexually predatory behaviour against children means you are likely to set out to corrupt others. By corruption, I mean experiencing horrendous sexual abuse and eventually learning to gain sexual gratification from it. Priests who abuse seek protection from others, and usually get it - if they disclose abuse in their church, everyone will be investigated, so it's safer to keep abuse quiet, which means the opportunity for treatment is lost.

Some treated priests can be kept safe, and their risk reduced, but that means them disclosing the context in which they have abused, where they have been, disclosing names and which seniors knew but didn't act - no point treating and putting them back with a senior in the church who won't challenge suspicious behaviour and ensure they stay away from children.

The majority of prisons now offer sex offender treatment, and all probation services. It is cheaper to treat a sex offender in prison than to release them untreated and at risk of being reconvicted for further offences. It isn't too expensive now - it costs more in hidden costs of services for victims throughout their lives - depression, alcohol and drug abuse, self harm etc. Some see it as expensive because the amount of 'dosage' needed i.e. treatment hours applied, means that longer prison sentences have to be handed down to enable them to complete the treatment. 240 hours of treatment for a predatory paedophile will not necessarily effect a change if they are deeply entrenched. As a comparison, one-off sexual abusers who regret their behaviour and want to avoid doing it ever again might only need 60 hours of education and therapeutic intervention.

If every priest who abused was offered treatment, and the safeguarding children guidelines were adhered to, it would significantly reduce the number of future victims and men who are sexually attracted to children would be less likely to be allowed into the priesthood.

I'm doubtful about statistics to do with anything, although my instinct tells me that abuse of boys has probably been greater than that of girls. However, "scoring a Jesuit" or "having it away in the confessional" (very cramped and no soft surfaces) may never have been reported in many cases. "For those sins and those which I cannot now remember, may the Lord make us truly thankful…"