Religious Adoption Agency Will Shut Down Instead of Letting Gay Couples Adopt

Started by Pointless Digression, May 29, 2011, 07:14:39 AM

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ReijiTabibito

Quote from: Pointless Digression on May 31, 2011, 08:14:08 AM
Reiji,

In my analogy to antisemitism, I finished with the line: "I'm making an analogy to express my point that ideological commitment is not a virtue in and of itself."

On the same subject, you ended with the quote, "To sum up: One's conviction and willingness to stand by their own ideologies is not inherently wrong.  It's the ideology that's wrong.

So as far as that goes, we're in agreement.

Yes, so it does.  And for that, I am certainly glad.

Quote from: Pointless Digression on May 31, 2011, 08:14:08 AM
But you still expressed admiration that the Church was willing to stick by their commitment, and I'm approaching it from the angle that if a person's beliefs result in demonstrable harm to another person, I don't give them any bonus points for sticking to them. Especially not in this case, as the people being harmed by the Church's commitment to its beliefs are desperately needful children.

You are correct in that the RCC's decision to do this are resulting in almost-certain harm to persons - children or the employees.  But IMO, that's not a result of their adherence, that's a result of having a flawed ideology.  I know it might not sound different, but it is to me.  In a way, it's similar to Voltaire's "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Quote from: Pointless Digression on May 31, 2011, 08:14:08 AM
Thank you for the history and theology lesson. I don't really want to go down that path, since it's a tangent to the original post, so we can either pick it up in a new thread or in messages if you want to hear my response.

Yes, that was a bit of a tangent from the original question, which is about the Catholic Church's adoption program and homosexuals.  If I want to pick it up again, you'll hear from me.

Jude

I'm not sure I agree with the statistical changes you're invoking, removing of young-career priests, because the numbers for the general population don't exact remove people who recently turned adults thus become eligible for pedophilia.  Your .08% number also isn't correct:

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.032408.153618

From what I've seen around 5% of the public is a guilty of child molestation and:

http://www.usccb.org/mr/causes-and-context-of-sexual-abuse-of-minors-by-catholic-priests-in-the-united-states-1950-2010.pdf

Lands the percent of priests at 4.

Noelle

I'm reluctant to wave my flags for the whole "stick to your guns" mantra. If better information becomes available that shows someone's stance to be flawed or otherwise incomplete/wrong/unjust/etc., I hardly want them to stubbornly adhere to what they believed before. That's not a mark of virtue, that's a mark of willful ignorance because certain facts are inconvenient or that a person feels threatened by the truth.

Lyell

I'm no expert on this but telling people that their beliefs, their faith and their teachings are incomplete/wrong/unjust/etc. rarely produces positive results. People tend to resist change unless they see it as immediately beneficial. For that reason, I do not applaud or condemn the adoption agency for its actions as it was practically expected.

For the record, I do not agree with their reason but I respect that it IS their decision to make.
When you absolutely, positively have to kill it with fire...accept no substitutes.