@BrazenlyLiberal I would largely agree but allowing themselves to be misled is a forfeit of free will. The entire reason their lamb of god died. They don’t even get their own book message.
The thing is people are taught good/bad when we're very young. The lessons come from people we instinctively trust and we aren't yet mature enough to evaluate them.
By the time a person is grown, that sense of right/wrong is baked in and the best likelihood of healthy acceptance of some of it and rejection of others is if a tendency for independent thought has also been baked in. Nobody consciously decides to be hypocritical. Inconsistencies are brushed off as "God's will'
@BrazenlyLiberal Oh contrare, I had to treat 2 pedophile priests for years. They both made conscious decisions to do horrible things.
I was talking about the congregation.
@BrazenlyLiberal Then the congregation should stop, pause, then consider who they are following.
The answer most would come to is "not MY priest. He's not one of the bad ones"
@BrazenlyLiberal Right! He’s the good catholic priest living vicariously through your tawdry tales in a sound proof booth of human judgement, all the while being no better at solving human foibles than the person who has to testify before him
Well, I dunno. It all looks much different from the outside and more complex on the inside. Catholicism is not just a religion in some places, it's a culture with rich tradition.
You left it. I left it. But a lot of genuinely good people stay.
@BrazenlyLiberal I can agree with that.