As to your commentary: Rubbish.

The bit about the children's homes seems logical.
Pederasts are drawn to groups of kids, and what better place to get them than among the least fortunate, who have no defenders ?

Two to the back of the skull's an effective cure.
Probably the only one.

By the bye, how do you reconcile your acceptance of slavery with your opposition to having sex with children ?

If having sex with a young slave is immoral, wouldn't that mean that slaves have rights ?
And, if slaves have rights, why wouldn't those rights include the right not to be enslaved ?

Because classical slavery considered slaves to be fellow humans. It was racial slavery where they were inhuman and sex with those slaves was immoral for the same reason bestiality is. Sex with a lamb is no worse than with a sheep, morally.

And the form of "racial slavery" we're most familiar with here (Whites = Master Race, non-whites = subhumans) is mostly an artifact of the African Slave Trade.

Before the slave trade really got rolling to the Caribbean and America, black Africans (in art and literature) were just "funny-looking foreigners" with the emphasis on being foriegners. The meme "Blacks = animals" did not come in until the slave trade was really going strong, as a defense mechanism for slavers and their customers. It helped (for such a visually-oriented species as humans) that the slaves were visibly different.

Orrin's being coy.

The real issue, though, is that he wants to disparage European kiddie sex as an outgrowth of European secularism, but he is not willing to disparage American kiddie sex as an outgrowth of Catholicism, because hee cannot tolerate anything negative about Christianity.

Yet he defends the bishops, who actually ran the sex ring, while condemning the European secularists, whose complicity, if any, was mere indifference.

Don't get me wrong. I think indifference in this stuff is a serious charge. But the bishops should be burned at the stake.

Harry:

You're right. The Church made an obvious mistake by actively recruiting gay men for the priesthood. Bishops who covered it up should--but won't be--prosecuted. But that has nothing to do with Catholicism generally, except to the extent that it succumbed to a secular trend..

Europe is having trouble with true pedophilia -- people (almost entirely men) who are sexually arroused by prepubescents.

The Church's problem in America is with men who had sex with adolescent boys under the age of consent. This is a serious problem, particularly for the Catholic church, but is a different problem.

That secular trend must have started mighty early, in fact, back in the Age of Faith. Read your Decameron.

Catholic exploitation of children for sex has been around since there were Catholics. It's part of the religion.

of the species. Children are easy prey because they're powerless. That's why we kill them so freely now too. If fetuses could vote abortion would be illegal.

"Because classical slavery considered slaves to be fellow humans."

Not really; see "The Problem of Slavery in Western Civilization."

"And the form of 'racial slavery' we're most familiar with here (Whites = Master Race, non-whites = subhumans) is mostly an artifact of the African Slave Trade."

Actually, racial slavery has been common world history; indeed, very common. See Orlando Patterson's works on the subject.

"Before the slave trade really got rolling to the Caribbean and America, black Africans (in art and literature) were just 'funny-looking foreigners' with the emphasis on being foriegners."

Actually, the notion of blacks being a different species was common throughout much of European history; and this was especially true of the renaissance period that immediately preceded the post-Columbian Americas.

"The meme 'Blacks = animals' did not come in until the slave trade was really going strong, as a defense mechanism for slavers and their customers."

Again, this is wrong; such notions were especially strong in the sugar producing areas of the Mediterranean (from the Crusades onward) that created the slave model that was introduced into the Americas.

"It helped (for such a visually-oriented species as humans) that the slaves were visibly different."

You'll find that the one constant of most societies where slavery was important - in Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe (the vikings were notorious slave raiders and traders for example), etc. - was the need to differentiate slaves from the "free." This was done via skin color, markings, and innumerable other ways. You will also find that a constant was that the slave - even slaves who held high office - was as Patterson calls him, "socially dead." This is why emancipation has always been a painful experience; it generally takes generations for the mark of slavery to extinguished - this was even true of slave societies where skin color not an issue (in West Africa for example).

Yes, in there was never a problem with pedophilia in Europe until "secularism" came along. What an utterly stupid argument. BTW, anyone who knows anything about "Portugal" knows that it is hardly a "secular" society; indeed, its one of the strongest centers of Catholic faith in Europe.

oj,

Actually the commission states that it really has less to do with homosexuality, than with people who are not very comfortable with or secure in their sexuality (straight or gay).

It may be part of humans in general, but it's also part of the Catholic (and other ones, too) religion in particular.

In other words, Catholicism has no particular claim to standing as against any other group, and considerably less credibility than most.

On the principle of economy, if nothing else, we'd be better off without it. Certainly, the kids would.

Read "Putting the Devil Back in Hell."

The religious are Fallen too. Kids would be better off if there were no youth programs at all because that's where paedophiles go to find them. Just keep kids locked up until they're big enough to fend for themselves.