Church Turns To Facebook To Find Priests
crimeandpunishment writes "The Catholic church of France isn't looking for friends on Facebook, it's looking for priests. The church has turned to Facebook as part of a campaign to attract young people to the priesthood, in an effort to combat its drastically dwindling number of priests. It may be working. The Facebook page attracted more than 1,200 fans in one week."
So, what are they going to do once every state has a law banning sex offenders from social networks?
No, the jokes will continue. But hey, the church brought this on themselves. While many can learn to forgive (per teachings of Jesus), no one must forget.
Life is not for the lazy.
Perhaps they should actively seek to inspire people rather than trying to protect and defend themselves. There may have been a time when their church was above and beyond criticism, but those days are long gone. They need to accept this fact and focus on the positive rather than the negative. Furthermore, they need to look within themselves and to blame themselves for the current public opinion of their church. (In other words, instead of blaming the victims for speaking out, blame the people who did the victimizing!)
Then, after all that, do good works... LOTS of good works. That used to work in the past. These days, one rarely hears much about the good works of the church...
It will largely take care of the pedophile problem and the dwindling number willing to be priests in one shot.
Priests marrying wasn't disallowed all throughout church history anyway, it was political nonsense to do away with questions of inheritance.
But are all the schools trying to cover it up every time something like that happens, and protect the teacher in question?
Also wrong. The biggest threat to children are parents (or generally close family and "friends"). As with most of serious crime BTW...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Alright, I'm an atheist! That means I can joke about it as much as I wish!
But I wont, because frankly it's just painful. But I'll give you some free advice (the worst kind, I know): if the best you can say to defend your own religion is that all other religions are just as bad or worse but have somehow managed to keep a lid on it... then maybe it's time to look for a new religion, or, and I say this from experience, to let go of them altogether.
Mod +5 funny. Or +5 naive. I'd love to think that there is some religion or non-religion that consistently makes people better people
But centuries of data shows otherwise.
Utimately, it comes down to individuals and their individual choices. I've known very good Chrisitans and very evil ones. I've known very good Atheists and ones who I certainly wouldn't trust my kids with.
The bottom line is that you need to judge people individually and not collectively
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
In a word: Bullshit.
The biggest threat to kids is family, and family friends. Those statistics make all others look small.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
And even then, to be fair, back in the 1970's and before, there weren't mandatory reporting laws for sexual abuse. Society in general has become more aware of the problems; the Church really wasn't out of step with the prevailing attitudes.
(Of course, what does that say about their claims to be moral leaders?)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I like this quote from Sam Harris... "I've read the books. God is not a moderate. There's no place in the books where God says, 'You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.'"
Why do people still believe in Christianity? It is 2010. Must we propagate this insanity any further?
Unfortunately, since the minimum age to sign up for Facebook is 13, it is not very useful for recruiting altar boys. Sometimes the traditional ways work best...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That's not the most ridiculous thing about this. Think about it, they're looking on Facebook for people who want to be celibate.
I don't rate their chances very highly.
I hate printers.
After so many scandals of the church.
I'm realy not proud of the religion, i'd rather would protect the innocent against any books of so called wisdom.
A religion works only on the personal level, and beyond that a few steps higher it becomes politics, scandals and greed for power.
On the small scale i do understand people need religion (for life and death situations) for social and emotional peace.
On a the big scale explain me why doesnt the top of all the main religions come together and settle their differences.
There would be much more peace, around in the world.
And no i dont feel empty because i lost big faith in it, i think its the 21 century; mankind has become smarter.
We know what stars are, we cannt proof to explain it all; but then why should we?
I have totaly no need to understand darkmatter gods, or alians;
I mean beeing normal these days is complex enough to me.
But somehow i'm able to pickout those people who are normal too, almost on sight.
I therefor rather believe in real people, people who sometimes are bright examples of living a good life.
But sometimes are people who make small mistakes, as long as they dont become dangerous > is that atheism to believe in people?
Why facebook? Why not somewhere more suited to finding a better selection of possible catholic priest candidates? Like 4chan for example?
This really falls in the So What List. The catholic church is looking for more priests whats new. So they are using Facebook as a tool. So what... A good for them.
Now this is just in bad taste for slashdot as it will only really be just a forum to make fun of problems that a religion is having.
This Ain't News for nerds, this isn't news for geeks, if you are not interested in joining the priesthood it doesn't even matter. You just wanted an other forum to make fun of catholics.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not the schools, but the teacher unions do.
Last I checked teacher's unions don't have a lot of pull in the district attorney's office.
While false accusations are a real problem, I'm pretty sure I've never heard of a case of a teacher's union covering for a real sexual abuse case. Care to link to some actual proof for your assertion?
Religious/non-religious does not make a lot of difference... but a religious authority does! God trumps your mom, dad and government... and the priest who just told you to shut up about the abuse is a direct representative of god. This little detail and the fact that those priest eagerly forgive themselves or even make it 'right' by claiming that that little bit of evil is OK because of all the good they can do because of it is just sickening (not only with sexual abuse, but also like mother Theresa who let unfortunate people suffer so she herself could be closer to god).
In my experience any man who claims to have a more direct line to god (or the supernatural) than you should be avoided at any cost. I'm certain that if there would be no religious leaders there would be almost no problems with religion...
The reality is that a child is far more likely to be molested by a family member or someone else they know then by priests, teachers, Boy Scout troop leaders, etc.
I'm not defending the Church's actions. They need to be punished and made to pay so severely that they never again put their own interests above the people they claim to be guiding and protecting. But the fact is that like everything else to do with the "for the children" kneejerkism of the modern age, it's as much hype and fear mongering as anything else.
Scaring parents is a major industry now. Journalism, or at least the semi-journalism of news magazine shows makes a killing off of it. Politicians get elected by it. Police get big budgets to sit on their fat asses playing around on Internet forums with it.
The odds are that your child is probably safer in church or in school than they are in their own bedroom.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
More seriously - dear Catholic church: maybe if you're having trouble with recruiting, it might be a good idea to look at your medieval personnel policies? You know, like maybe letting priests get married, letting women in, etc, etc. Might cut down on the pervert problem too. I'm just sayin'.
Here we go, do we expect slashdot to become a sectarian site as well? Can we keep to technology commenting and avoid moronic remarks on the church? Not all the technical
people are athiest. Guess what some of them are even catholic. Should I deduce from this comment and the previous one that you call them pedophile or a perv?
If you seek consistency in your beliefs, try agnosticism.
Were I to care about other people's faith I would rather recommend apatheistic ignosticism. Since I don't, I recommend spending your time on improving your area's data on OpenStreetmap rather than meditating about the finer aspects of particular faiths. Religion has yet to do anything useful for the world at large, but OSM has aided me innumerable times in the few years since its inception.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Give me a break, those are all piss-poor examples. Psychologists don't give advice on how to best be mentally ill, and the job of divorce lawyers is to offer legal services, something they are indeed very experienced in.
Would you go to a relationship counsellor who was never in a relationship? Well, you might, but it is hardly surprising that those of us not already blinded might think twice about it.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
what religious prick went and made all these posts troll. The vatican got fuckheads on /. too. You can't keep covering it up mr pope.Christian churches covered up the fact the priests were buggering altar boys.
Fuck you covering it up is almost as bad as doing it.
If you really think that any sort of schooling can teach someone about relationships the same way schooling can teach a doctor medicine, or a lawyer the law, then you are delusional beyond hope.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)