[synetic]

I remember being outraged at her tearing up John Paul II’s picture. The media in the U.S. did a great job of hiding why she did it. I was not outraged at her when I found out her justified reasons for doing so. That was the first time I became consciously aware that news is a business and that that business thrives when it generates outrage. I no longer fall victim to this.

She’s far more the saint than that bastard John Paul II.

EDIT: Ironic this is flagged. I’m proud of this actually. I feel a slight kinship with Sinead now. In honor of her death would that we all, in our own way, tear to shreds the image of John Paul II!

[dang]

You started a religious flamewar and then poured fuel into it in multiple places. That's why your comment is flagged. Please don't post like that here.

Your comment was just fine in the first paragraph and broke the site guidelines with the second paragraph—not because we care what you think about popes, but because such swipes predictably lead to internet dreckfests and we're simply trying to have a forum that doesn't suck. At least to the extent possible.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[synetic]

I’ve been on this site since the beginning. I change usernames periodically. I understand the desire to avoid flame wars.

Here’s a sincere question. If I called Charles Manson a bastard would that be flamebait? Are we at the point that calling out the objectively verified despicable acts of a person is flamebait?

It wasn’t a swipe at the man. Sinead suffered a lot for ripping his image apart. She has died now. It is appropriate to point out she did not deserve the reaction and that the protector of her abusers did deserve to have his image shredded.

It’s always ok to call out those who abuse or protect abusers. I care not that my post got flagged. I’m glad of it. I feel a tiny bit like Sinead. Even after all that is known about John Paul 2 people still can’t face reality about the man.

We obviously don’t agree. I’ll stop posting about this and just read all responses.

[dang]

"That bastard John Paul II" was obvious flamebait—of course it was a swipe. You're broadcasting to thousands of people when you post here. Did you really think some people wouldn't react? Is it a high-quality conversation about Sinead O'Connor to have people yell at each other about popes?

> It’s always ok to call out those who abuse or protect abusers. I care not that my post got flagged. I’m glad of it. I feel a tiny bit like Sinead

We're trying to avoid online callout/shaming culture on this site. It reliably leads to poor-quality discussion. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a... Generally, the state of high indignation (and its correlate, high moral justification) isn't congruent with the intended spirit of conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[dredmorbius]

Talking truth to power is virtually always a swipe. But a richly deserved one.

I understand HN's viewpoint on this. I disagree with it in the extreme.

[mixmastamyk]

It's one thing I hate about this site. You can't tell "the truth as you know it," and instead have to pretend to be "curious." I'm generally curious, so it's not a difficult requirement most days.

Well, guess what? Some things are actually bad-and it's obvious—and we are experienced enough to know it. Child abuse would fall into that category. After confirmation, no "curiosity" is needed in that instance.

(I understand the angle about conversation deteriorating quickly, and am still here, right? But damn I hate it when we can't state obvious truth because it is not "polite." )

[synetic]

[flagged]

[dang]

Gratuitous Hitler invocation usually is.

This type of trolley-problem questioning doesn't work for getting a clearer picture of HN moderation. HN is not a letter-of-the-law kind of place. There's no comprehensive doctrine covering all cases, and it would be foolish of us to try to make one.

[wahnfrieden]

[flagged]

[dang]

You're correct that little curious conversation is possible about Hitler. Even Satan has a better chance.

The rest of your post is a caricature but I assume you meant it that way.

[bmmayer1]

This was arguably one of the first "cancellations" before "cancel culture" was a thing we were talking about.

Right or wrong, what she did was definitely courageous and arguably destroyed her career.

[CydeWeys]

> This was arguably one of the first "cancellations" before "cancel culture" was a thing we were talking about.

Um, I think the 1,500+ year history of the Catholic church would beg to differ here ...

And even before that, Socrates was so canceled for his views he was killed by the state.

[clipsy]

Not to mention that only a few short decades ago homosexuals had to meticulously hide their sexuality and any of their relationships for fear of getting fired simply because of who they were (and, before that, imprisoned!). And countless other examples. Anyone who believes "cancel culture" is a recent development is breathtakingly ignorant.

[bmmayer1]

That's a fair point. There's arguably an inflection point where media became "mass" media that's hard to pin down but somewhere in the late 1980's-early 1990's where 24 hour news and the internet were in their infancy. I'm sure there's a smart thesis here that a media expert could make ;)

[nailer]

Same.

As a child, I thought the Pope and the church helped poor people and practiced showing people how to be good to each other by following the ten commandments. When Sinead O Connor ripped up the picture of the Pope on SNL I remember asking why.

Someone said the reason was because she was crazy. They were lying to me.

Sinead O'Connor was drawing attention to child sexual abuse when nobody else was.

> She’s far more the saint than that bastard John Paul II.

I don't know about JP2's involvement in child sexual abuse (not doubting you, just saying I don't know *) but Ratzinger / Benedict absolutely deliberately prevented investigation into, and facilitated (by moving rapist priests into new parishes), child sexual abuse.

Years later I apologized to O'Connor on Twitter and she took it with grace.

* Update: some research showed the Vatican, under JP2, opposed extensions of the statutes of limitations in sex abuse cases.

[michaelsbradley]

  Ratzinger / Benedict absolutely deliberately prevented investigation into, and facilitated (by moving rapist priests into new parishes), child sexual abuse.

No, not really at all, actually:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#Sexual_abuse...

[basisword]

Do you not think your comment would have been better without the final sentence?

[dang]

It was flamebait, but please let's not take the bait because a religious flamewar is not what we need here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[nailer]

Dan I don't think that comment was designed to be religious flamebait. It may seem like sectarianism if you're not Catholic so I understand feeling this way, but the people who are the most angry about Catholic priests raping children are people that grew up Catholic like myself.

Ie, this isn't attacking anyone on the basis of their religion.

I'd probably say the comment could be improved by adding a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Pope_John_Paul_II instead of 'that bastard' but criticism of people that facilitate child abuse is quite reasonable and very separate from attacking members of a particular religion.

[basisword]

That’s the reason I called it out as respectfully as I could. I was hoping OP would edit the comment given the rest of it is valid and gets the same point across.

[synetic]

In honor of Sinead’s death it seems appropriate to tear to shreds the image of John Paul II. You are on the wrong side, morally speaking, in this Dang.

[dang]

It's simply the practical question of what type of site HN is trying to be. We want curious conversation, not people bashing each other, which is what flamebait leads to.

Commenters who get too sure of their moral positions tend to do a lot of this. I'm not saying the moral positions are wrong (I probably agree a lot of the time, certainly Sinead did a courageous thing, etc. etc.). But the quality of discussion this leads to is predictably poor, evokes worse from others, and tends to go straight to the bottom of the internet barrel. We're trying to not get sucked completely into that muck here—a difficult task to even partly achieve, so we need everyone's help.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[fknorangesite]

I mostly like the moderation on this site, but I think you're missing the mark on this one.

The man - and the institution - facilitated and covered up the abuse and rape of countless children. Calling him a bastard seems pretty small potatoes for you to start clutching your pearls over.

[dang]

One has to distinguish the importance of a topic from the quality of internet conversation about it. We moderate for the latter, not the former. Most important topics, including most atrocities, don't make HN's front page, and most things that do make the front page are neither important nor an atrocity.

People tend to respond to activating topics with intense pre-existing feelings. That's understandable—I'm not criticizing it and it would be futile to try to change it. But it does not make for curious conversation, which is what HN is for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Curious conversation is about learning new things, changing one's orientation, and so on. That's one reason why the best HN threads tend to have a whimsical aspect—when a topic isn't high-stakes and one doesn't have a pre-existing position about it, curiosity is the natural state. Not so much otherwise.

[BugsJustFindMe]

I don't. Do you? If so, why?

[prmoustache]

yeah think of those poor bastards who now are associated to the former chef of a child abuse cartel.

[osullish]

I think his last sentence doesn't go far enough - I'm not sure how far I'd need to go to describe someone who covered up systemic child abuse on a global scale

[TedDoesntTalk]

It always confused me how, at least in Boston, many many priests (but not the most egregious one or two) avoided prosecution for child abuse.

[osullish]

Same in Ireland, some high profile cases were prosecuted- but not the majority, and nothing happened the nuns - especially the evil that ran the mother and baby homes. 300+ babies discarded in a septic tank.

[fknorangesite]

And similarly in Canada as we are finding the unmarked graves of children at the former sites of the Residential "School" system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...

O'Connor was right.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I did not know about this. Thank you for sharing

[TedDoesntTalk]

Do you have a link for the 300+ discarded babies? I'd like to read about that.

[osullish]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_...