I imagine it’s from all the times authority figures from religious organisations that are so zealously espousing “think of the children” have ended up being the very thing they are supposedly fighting against.
I can’t speak to the lightheartedness of the intent of the author, but I can say that I personally understand the structure of the humour at play.
Plenty of times a Church has reported it’s leaders who were abusing their position and co-operated with law enforcement.
And plenty of times they’ve done the exact opposite, enough that is is part of the cultural Zeitgeist of multiple nations that religious authority figures have been abusing their power and getting away with it for centuries.
My church’s policy is that you report it to the police first.
I mean this genuinely and not as an attack.
I’m not sure how to address that level of naïveté but i will explain it as best I can.
Firstly, I can’t imagine there is a single policy written anywhere that states “hide the child abuse from the police” as the official position.
Secondly, I’d wager good money that all the religious institutions and staff at all those places would swear up and down that the policy was to report it to the police and it was a few “bad actors” in an otherwise fundamentally good organisation.
The exception possibly being those very insular cults where the abuses are part of the actual doctrine, in those cases they’d admit to it because they don’t see themselves as having some something wrong based on their beliefs.
There are numerous historic and ongoing cases about this, it’s not difficult to find.
Even if you personally (or even all the people you know) are 100% following this guideline, it’s provably true that that isn’t always the case.
“But the rules say we should report them” isn’t strong position to defend any size of organised religion in the face of the sheer number of accusations, arrests and investigations to the contrary.
As I said, and I mean it, this isn’t an attack on you or yours. You could be absolutely correct about your circle, and I have no issues with individual faith (as long as its not forced upon others).
The issue I have is with trying to defend organised religion as a whole using small anecdotal data as a basis.
Honestly, I want you to be right but “trust me bro” isn’t a good argument and you need good arguments, because weak arguments are worse than no arguments at all.
I imagine it’s from all the times authority figures from religious organisations that are so zealously espousing “think of the children” have ended up being the very thing they are supposedly fighting against.
I can’t speak to the lightheartedness of the intent of the author, but I can say that I personally understand the structure of the humour at play.
And plenty of times they’ve done the exact opposite, enough that is is part of the cultural Zeitgeist of multiple nations that religious authority figures have been abusing their power and getting away with it for centuries.
I mean this genuinely and not as an attack.
I’m not sure how to address that level of naïveté but i will explain it as best I can.
Firstly, I can’t imagine there is a single policy written anywhere that states “hide the child abuse from the police” as the official position.
Secondly, I’d wager good money that all the religious institutions and staff at all those places would swear up and down that the policy was to report it to the police and it was a few “bad actors” in an otherwise fundamentally good organisation.
The exception possibly being those very insular cults where the abuses are part of the actual doctrine, in those cases they’d admit to it because they don’t see themselves as having some something wrong based on their beliefs.
There are numerous historic and ongoing cases about this, it’s not difficult to find.
Even if you personally (or even all the people you know) are 100% following this guideline, it’s provably true that that isn’t always the case.
“But the rules say we should report them” isn’t strong position to defend any size of organised religion in the face of the sheer number of accusations, arrests and investigations to the contrary.
As I said, and I mean it, this isn’t an attack on you or yours. You could be absolutely correct about your circle, and I have no issues with individual faith (as long as its not forced upon others).
The issue I have is with trying to defend organised religion as a whole using small anecdotal data as a basis.
Honestly, I want you to be right but “trust me bro” isn’t a good argument and you need good arguments, because weak arguments are worse than no arguments at all.