| The Church is composed of the people in it. And should be judged by the actions of those that comprise it, otherwise you are abandoning all agency, and it may as well be dismantled as it could not be responsible for anything it does. Also, no evidence of any god exists, but that is another argument. Let's stick with arguments that postulates the existence of a God in the Catholic tradition. First, according to the Bible, papal infallibility has whatever the Church does held as law in Heaven. Stupid rule, but there you are. Therefore, if we judge that covering up and enabling child abuse is immoral, then the Church is by its own rule, immoral. Well, that doesn't work out so well for the Church. So let's leave that aside. The Catholic Church (and other denominations) tries explain evil (and thus side step the "All Good, All Power, and All Knowing -- pick two problem of God), but claiming that it is all part of God's greater plan. The difficulty here is that it doesn't side step the problem, but tried to solve it by adding a layer of abstraction to it. What you end up with is that God's plan has to be definitionally immoral because it came from the mind of God. The answer is, of course, who can know the mind of God? It sort of kicks the can down the road much the way the Millerites (now Seventh Day Adventists) do on the end of the world and QAnon does with Trump coming back (was it January 20th? Or March 6th? Or March 20th?). Evil exists because God's plan demands it, but somehow removes the responsibility of God's plan from God. So, the children were abused by the men acting in God's name because God's plan demanded their suffering, but God owns none of the responsibility because you can't possibly understand the reason that God required the suffering of those children. Nice work, if you can get it. Free will (in the Catholic tradition) allows the ability to see the harm that actions do upon others, but somehow we are supposed to turn a blind eye to that done under the protection of God. Because those children were clearly not under the protection of God. Divine Physician, indeed. Physician, heal thyself. |