542
And the same is likely true with virtually every other large denomination and probably a lot of small ones too, because those who preach morality the loudest are often the most hypocritical.
The point of any church is to centralize wealth and power. Otherwise why bother with the bureaucracy, the buildings, and the mandatory meetings?
The problem with centralizing wealth and power is that it attracts people who prioritize wealth and power. The problem compounds itself by making it ridiculously easy for basically any man (men, usually and specifically) to become leaders with basically no qualifications necessary other than claims of faith and a little bit of charisma.
People who wish to abuse power (e.g. for personal sexual satisfaction) will seek institutions that already have power that readily and easily allow it to be abused. Churches have always been their perfect home, always ready and willing to accept new abusers into their flock.
Religion and piety are the easiest things to lie about. No qualifications necessary! In fact, you can work your way all the way to the top of any religion and count on it to protect your abuse at every step of the way because publicly acknowledging that abuse happens is really bad for any religion or religious institution.
Once you get higher into the organization you'll learn about other bad things the church and its people have done and be able to use that knowledge to blackmail others and maybe even hold the entire institution hostage! It's how big, rich church leaders are made!
I don't know what the solution is but I can say that so far the best defense against sexual abuse in general is to avoid church and religious institutions.
Do you really think that church and religion is the primary source of child abuse? You sweet summer child.
load more comments
(12 replies)
You gotta be pretty evil to need a law that protects you from having to divulge child sexual abuse (or any serious crime).
The Mormon church is not setup into separate regional entities like that catholics have done. Their billions are all vulnerable to lawsuits. Instead they have a pet lawfirm that often recommends illegal and unethical practices to squash lawsuits. If the case looks to be going badly they toss higher and higher settlement numbers to get out of it. They do not want to go through discovery and have to disclose exactly how much money they have (est. several hundred billion)It's been an extremely effective solution so far.
For example: At one point they made up more than 50% of the boyscouts. They had less checks and protocols for keeping pedophile's out. They completely dodged all the large lawsuits because they were much better at hiding the horrendous amount of abuse.
The Mormon owned universities have rampant sexual assault issues. You rarely see them reported because the victims are punished for coming forward. The university police force is used to suppress these reports as well.
Churches need to start paying taxes. They regularly commit crimes, influence politics, and make absurd amounts of money.
Every structure that is based on authority will have abuse on various levels of it's structure. Be it church, police, politicians, secret societies, etc. This is because some people trust others, some people have power over others. This relationship will always be abused.
Yes, all of those things need to be either demolished or significantly overhauled. Especially, organized religions, and mostly in the former category.
Mormons abusing children just like every other religion? Wow, shocker, I'm so surprised that an organization specifically created to dupe and control people would abuse their authority to hurt children.
So shocking.
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
542 points (98.9% liked)
News
23268 readers
1836 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS