I have a real question whether personal rights, properly understood, would conflict with "duties to neighbors." (I, of course, am indifferent to duties to god, although if you want to recast that as duty to be moral, I find the same question -- how can these conflict?)

Among the more obvious human rights -- so obvious it is never mentioned, except sometimes by darwinians -- is membership in a community. The extreme statement of this, which I pretty much subscribe to, is that solipsism is impossible, that there is no such thing, speaking naturally, as an individual human any more than it makes sense to speak of an individual ant or termite.

If I have this right:

My neighbor's rights come before my own. Not equal, but before. Which, to my neighbor, means my rights come before his. That makes absolutely no sense at all.

Duties to God. According to whom?

The human leader of an earthly bureaucracy is able to unerringly understand divine revelation.

Oh, and one other thing. Corrosive American culture affects all religions equally, yet it is the Catholics who seem to be soaking up all the ink with respect to raping children.

Maybe, just maybe, a celibate priesthood and the immoral exclusion of women from its ranks has something to do with it.

This guy is an insult to religiosity.

Harry:

What interest can my genes have in the survival of yours?

Jeff:

Duties, not rights. If your neighbor's house is burning down you have a right not to help, but a duty to do so. As a non-believer you choose rights over duties and that determines the kind of society you'll end up.

Jeff:

Recall too that you believe those gay priests have a right to engage in homosexual conduct, while it is we who believe they owe a duty first to their victims. The soaking up ink part is just Catholic-bashing.

OJ:

I misread the first one--thanks for setting me straight.

As for the second point, you make no sense at all. Defending someone's right to hetero or homosexual conduct does not in any way justify that conduct regardless of context. Homosexuality is no more intrinsically evil for the existence of raped children than heterosexuality. The act is evil regardless of the biological details.

The Catholic Church has been soaking up ink on this subject due to both grotesque moral failures, and the characteristics of the priesthood. Enforcing a dogma that is guaranteed to filter out sexually normal men, and compounding that by excluding women's moderation seems fundamental to the problem. Blaming it on American culture--which affects all religions equally--is specious.

It only counts as Catholic bashing if other religions have the same problem, but get a by from the press.

Jeff:

There you go, that's what I mean by hate speech. Your assertion that the priesthood is made up of abnormal men is despicable. The church has a homosexuality problem, not a celibacy problem.

There is a wide range of sexual appetite among men. Some men are sex addicts. Other men have no problem with celibacy. Most of us are in the middle, but still in a range where some men's libidos are higher or lower than others.

If celibacy causes sexual perversion and molestation, why don't celibate Buddhist monks rape children? Why don't Greek Orthodox bishops (who are celibate and umarried unlike Orthodox priests) do so as well? I don't see evidence of correlation, much less causation.

There is a problem within the Catholic Church, but I find it odd that critics outside the Church itself (as opposed to reformers within the faith) immediately seize this issue to attack the notion of celibacy.

If celibacy causes men's sex drive to be unfulfilled, won't most pursue attachment to women? Do we really believe that somehow they won't seek that but immediately become depraved child molesters?

Many of these same critics also believe that homosexuality is purely determined by genetics and not caused by anything else. Yet they immediately latch onto the notion that being celibate causes men to become child molesters. Maybe, like gays then, they're simply born that way? We don't know.

What is apparent though is that such critics don't want to investigate this issue, but immediately attack the Church and its positions. That is bigotry.

Chris:

That's especially true of Jeff who believes it's genetic (heck, who believes everything's genetic). Excellent points.

Orrin, my genes don't have a mind of their own, but it is to my advantagee to see that my relations do well, because they will help my children to survive.

The extension of this, which from a darwinian viewpoint is merely practical, to all of humankind is a property of emergent moral sense, and may, in many cases, work against inclusive fitness, which is all darwinism measures.

I would say that fulfilling any duties you may think I have to Moslems is suicidal for me and mine, and therefore, whatever the logical argument may be, is something I should never do.

As for priest-rapists, the other religions do it, too, and they do get a pass from the press. We could mention the Rev. Billy James Hargis, for example.

Harry:

And school teachers, Scout leaders, etc.--any job with access to kids will attract them.

Those are some smart genes you have that can tell whether the burning house belongs to a Muslim and whether to risk your life.

"That's especially true of Jeff who believes it's genetic "

Wrong. Dead wrong. I have said clearly, many times, that homosexuality is almost certainly due to ontological processes (remember, for mammals, the female phenotype is the template). Homosexuality is no more genetic than cleft palate or spina bifida.

My assertion that celibacy filters out sexually normal men is not hate speech, it is clear fact. If one takes the meaning of the word normal in a statistical sense, then celibacy is going to represent a significant barrier to most men. Those who are asexual are not normal in a statistical sense, and won't find the same barrier. Therefore, celibacy will act as more of a barrier to entry to most men then it will to a few men, because of differences in opportunity cost.

Hence my conclusion. I might add that I read it (can't remember the source) in an editorial written by a practicing Catholic.

Because celibacy preferentially excludes the middle, then the extremes will be overrepresented.

Of course, it would be possible to boot all the homosexual priests. But without them, and the preferentially excluded middle, there will scarcely be enough priests left to turn out the lights.

That's a heck of a price to pay for a dogma that can trace its roots to worries about losing Church property to inheritance.

Something I neglected to add last night.

Do a thought experiment. Assume the Catholic priesthood was limited to married men.

It would filter out homo- and asexuals. That is not hate speech, simply an obvious conclusion.

And the rate of molested boys would go way down. But the rate of molested girls would go up.