A new but predictable story out of Ireland was released today. The Irish institutions for juveniles (old tern for the jailing of juvenile criminals and incorrigibles) were often run by religious groups including the Catholic Chruch. It was announced that abuses had certainly occurred from 1940 to the mid 80's at "Endemic" rates.
The abuses ranged from emotional to physical beatings for no known reason to sexual abuse. The children lived in fear not knowing if the abuse was going to come from someone in control such as a priest or an older "student".
This is the problem with blind faith. It generates absolute power and we all know that leads to corruption. I remember hearing a story of a boy in New York reporting the sexual abuse by his priest to his mother and she beat him for the accusation. We cannot turn a blind eye an defer total control to any group, especially when it comes to raising our children.
A truly disturbing aspect of this is the Catholic Church knew of the abuses and pedophiles in these institutions. This is clearly laid out in the report. You would think that an institution that had to apologize for not speaking up about the Concentration Camps would speak up about the sexual abuse of children. I guess that they aren't sincere about either problem.
Let's be honest about how we are handling our children and dealing with corruption. If we were talking about the systemic rape of little girls nationwide, would we even be talking about the Catholic Church in the US or would we be talking about how fast the collars came off because of rabid fathers?
Still worse yet, some of the congregations involved haven't accepted fault in the problem. The acknowledge that it happened, but they have tried to explain it away.
Say what you want about God's love and morality, this is the result of his teachings. Repeatedly world wide this is the result of leaving God's followers with children. Isn't it funny that child rape/molestation rates are way down while we have become less religious? Blind faith leads to child abuse, period.