I might be taking this out of context or maybe the article I read took this out of context, but it seems that the Pope recently said something to the effect that children being raped wasn't considered such a big deal when he was younger. Even as late as the 1970s, it wasn't that horrible of a thing.
Now, this can be taken a lot of ways. One one hand, he could be saying that people are only now starting to understand the mammoth consequences of raping children. This sounds crazy, but it has a bit of merit. he could be saying that the church is evolving to understand that doing this kind of thing is horrible.
However, the way most people are reading his statements is that he is dismissing the idea that all the child rape is so bad, because it's one of those things that people put too much stock into these days. They've overblown the issue.
This is shitty for two basic reasons. First of all, you can't really say to what degree something has harmed someone else. People's physical and emotional pain thresholds are very different. There may be some kids out there who had sex with an adult, were completely fine with it, and went on with their lives. Maybe even in centuries past, when people only lived to be 30 or so, it wasn't even a problem. The concept of childhood was almost nonexistent.
However, and this brings me to my second reason why this was a shitty thing to say, you can't really quantify something in the now based on how things were in the past. People are experiencing this pain in the NOW. They were hurt during recent years. Even if no one knew better for centuries, we know better now. And on this is what we should base all decisions.
Otherwise, you run into a whole quagmire of stupid. To say, "child rape didn't used to be such a big deal so why are we making it a big deal now?" would be like saying . . .
People used to put asbestos in buildings all the time! Why don't we do that now?
In the past, people tossed their chamber pot contents out into the street. If it was okay back then, it should be okay now!
In Rome, it was considered high entertainment to feed Christians to lions! Let's start that again!
As you can see, this concept that "it was okay in the past, it should be okay now" thing just doesn't fly. Societies change and our understanding of what it means to be comfortable, safe, and dignified as a human being changes with that.
Like I said, the Pope's quotes could be totally taken out of context or lost in translation. I honestly really hope this is the case, because otherwise, this is one of the stupidest statements he could make.
Because it is not okay to rape kids, even if it's been done every day from the beginning of time until now. It's not okay to cover it up when the rape is reported. It's not okay to threaten the victim or the family of the victim because you want to save face. It's not okay to deny that there is something very rotten within your organization. In fact, that last bit is the worst possible thing you can do because until you admit that you have a problem, you really can't change anything.
And if changes can't be made, I hear lions are always available.
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