Slashdot Mirror
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."
Priests looking to Facebook as part of a campain to attract young people.
I thought AOL was supposed to be more popular with the pedobear crowd.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
That sounds like a good idea. We know there aren't any perverts on Facebook.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Come on, guys, at least try to come up with something a little harder to shoot arrows at.
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.
Priests and/or pastors are not even the biggest threat to children it's teachers, at least once a week another teacher is in the news for molesting one of their students.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Boyscouts,Nambla,MichaelJackson,GarryGlitter,Archdiocese of Dublin Accept Invitation Y/N?
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
I'm an atheist. We have lower levels of sexual abuse because our morals are reinforced by logic and a sense of regret rather than forgiven and cleansed by God making everything ok.
Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris Hanson.
Pourquoi n'avez-vous pas un siège de plus ici?
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.
In other words, the writing's on the wall, but the situation is celibate.
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!
It's not a doctrine, it's an ecclesial law. Can be changed at a whim by one signature; wasn't even nearly a universal custom in the past (heck, around XIII century AFAI remember, when the Vatican envoy arrived in my area with the mission of sorting out actual introduction of celibacy...well, he did reasonably well in Czech; but in Poland he barely escaped with his life)
One that hath name thou can not otter
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?
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?
Church LF Priest. Need heals and good to go.
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...
1 Timothy 4:1-5:
1 But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, 3 men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; 5 for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.
Note how it says forbidding to marry is a teaching inspired my demons. I mean, wow, don't they read their own book?
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
That makes no sense... if someone truly believed there was no cosmic balance (via either God or Karma or some unknown force), and there was something they wanted to do and knew they would suffer no consequences for doing it, logic would dictate that there is no reason not to do it.
The ancient Greeks and Romans would often do what we would consider rape their slaves, sisters, children. There was no "sense of regret" because... it wasn't considered as big of a wrong. They weren't "hurting" anyone, it was about 10-20 minutes of discomfort for the 'victim', and everyone would go on with their lives. You could also say they had lower rates of sexual abuse simply because there was no such concept in the minds of the "victims".
The point I'm making is, in the absence of religion there would be no such thing as sexual abuse, because the entire concept was created by religion in the first place. Religion is what made the chain go touch->feel good->feel guilty that you felt good->feel angry at the person who triggered that response without your permission. They could just as easily have demonized tickling in the same way...
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.
It's NOT doctrine.
If someone wants to be a priest, bishop or other "top leader of a church" I suggest they look at this first:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy+3&version=NIV
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%203&version=NKJV
http://bible.cc/1_timothy/3-2.htm
The requirements there for Bishops and Deacons don't mention celibacy anywhere. In fact they do even mention "husband of but one wife".
So there's above reproach, husband of but one wife, temperate, self controlled, good reputation with outsiders, etc.
So practicing polygamists/adulterers/fornicators/pedophiles/homosexuals do not meet that standard. Nor do drunkards.
You might ask why not practicing homosexuals? Because honestly if you're a practicing homosexual you would not meet the "above reproach", "blameless" and "good reputation with outsiders" requirement.
Like it or not, but It is a fact that a practicing homosexual is still not "above reproach" in the real world.
There are all sorts of outsiders you would deal with as an official representative of the church. Not meeting these requirements would reduce your effectiveness. You would be a blunt knife.
How about non-practicing homosexuals? IMO, there isn't such a vast difference to being faithful to one wife and being faithfully celibate. If you feel it's such a huge difference and you can't stay celibate, then too bad you don't meet the "self controlled" requirement.
BUT don't forget you can always serve in other ways.
There are plenty of good works still to be done, why do you need to be a priest, bishop, deacon or whatever to do it? What's your motive really?
I'm not a homosexual, but I certainly don't meet those high standards either.
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'.
As a French atheist I am really having trouble modding you...
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.
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.
..."Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers!""
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
"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."
I'm thinking that you aren't getting how statistics works. Atheists on average are less likely to rape than the religious. rape along with a whole slew of other things... violent crime, divorce....
"The bottom line is that you need to judge people individually and not collectively"
I was talking about a group. You are just blanket denying the importance or usefulness of statistics in general. Which is frankly quite insane.