15 year old girl 'Kidnapped For Vatican Sex Parties,' claims RCC's leading exorcist.

[LeftishBrit]

44. I basically agree on this, but with a few reservations

I think there are several issues that get conflated, both from within and without the Catholic church:

(1) The Church as an institution

(2) Catholicism as a particular religious faith

(3) All Catholics as individuals and all Catholic groups.

And these can differ in many ways. E.g.

The church as an institution has sheltered paedophiles. Catholicism as a faith certainly does not approve paedophilia. Most individual Catholics do not condone paedophilia.

The church as an institution condemns birth control. It is ambiguous whether the faith as such condemns birth control; the issue does not seem to be present in the early teachings. Most Catholics as individuals accept and indeed practice birth control.

I think one has to be careful about equating all Catholics with the worst actions of the church, just as with equating Muslims with terrorism, or Protestants with Bible Belt fundie-ism, or Jews with the most extreme RW Israeli politicians, or atheists with Stalinism.

But there is the issue of when people associated with an organization should decide that 'enough is enough' and pressures from within are not working. I cannot tell Catholics what to do on this, as I'm not a Catholic. But I do think that the church is very badly run at the moment, as an institution; and that what happens in the end may depend on who replaces Benedict as Pope.