[freewilly1040]

To take a counter example, do you believe that the Catholic Church has had a pattern of covering up for pedophiles in its clergy? If so how far back does that pattern go? Why shouldn’t we assume it goes back hundreds of years, or the full 2000 year history of the church?

By the way, that same old church taught wives to obey their husbands and to this day does not allow them to be clergy. The notion that women are not worth as much as men was not recently introduced.

[AuthorizedCust]

Virtually every youth-serving organization used to not handle abuse of youth properly. I am not going to pin this just on the Catholic Church. Other youth-serving organizations, like sports, other churches, YMCAs, etc. were all deficient.

I am a volunteer in the Boy Scouts of America. Its market-leading and pioneering youth-protection programs are still examples to this day, and the vast majority of claims in its current bankruptcy process are from before these programs started. Society has changed, and youth are much better off for it.

[jwalgenbach]

"Virtually every youth-serving organization used to not handle abuse of youth properly."

This again? The existence of others committing the same crimes does not indemnify the Church.

Love the "Society has changed" argument. Clearly, recognizing that pedophilia is wrong by the Church is a product of changing times...not like they moved clergy from parish to parish to avoid them being caught.

[happilyFIREd]

Nice try with the 'whatabout-ism', but nearly by definition the non-religious groups are less sanctimonious.

[sethc2]

I’d say the church from Rome has always had problems like any group of humans. Collectively the churches established by the apostles I’d say got the truth right. Though if I were to pick a date where they went seriously wrong and led to what you saw at the time of the reformation and today I’d say 1054 AD

As for women being treated poorly that is not something the church introduced, but has practically been done by men since time began. If you read early church history you’d probably realize that your moral basis itself is founded upon the work church did.

If you’re someone who is open minded you should try to hear good arguments from another perspective. I’d recommend Dominion by Tom Holland perhaps - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465093507/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm...

What I’ve found is people who actually don’t believe their opinions strongly avoid books challenging those opinions, while those who do are perfectly willing to be challenged, because they are confident their opinion is the right one.

For example a person who weakly believes in a free market will avoid reading Marx, a person who strongly believes it will. And vice versa for let’s say Ayn Rand.

[freewilly1040]

If the whole point of an organization is morality, and the organization doesn't do any better in that arena than society at large, I don't see much point in the organization.

On the topic of the treatment of women, you'll note the original assertion was that this was something the church was especially good at, and I pointed out a sexist practice core to the church as currently practiced, not in the dustbin of history.

[sethc2]

Well my guess is you haven’t been to many non evangelicals churches nor looked at how they act or behave. The church reveres a woman above all other humans save him who was both God and man. Orphanages were setup by churches. Hospitals, schools, homeless shelters. They do that explicitly because of their beliefs.